THE music world is racing to keep pace with Taylor Swift. It's a none-too-easy job requiring speed, stamina and dexterity now that the just-18 singer and songwriter is in high demand for TV talk-show guest spots, award-show performances and hosting gigs and gearing up for opening slots on three of country music's big headlining tours for 2008.
It's been nonstop since her debut album, "Taylor Swift," topped the 2-million-sales mark and swept her to a best new artist Grammy nomination, a rarity for someone from the country music field.
And Swift isn't the type to slow down long enough for anyone to catch her. She spent her Christmas holiday working on her second album, due later this year, squeezed in a few headlining dates at some mid-size theaters, including the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills just last month, and seemed utterly in control of all the plates she's spinning during a whirlwind visit to a major music industry convention in Anaheim to thank the makers of the Taylor Guitars (no relation) she plays.
She was one of the guest announcers when the Grammy nominations were revealed in December, and figured she might be lucky enough to show up in one of the country categories, given the breakthrough success of her single "Tim McGraw" and succeeding hits "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Our Song."
"I didn't think I'd hear my name called in that category," she said of her best new artist nomination. "The fact that I'm included with those others," including critical faves Amy Winehouse and Feist, "that absolutely blows my mind. . . . To be included in an all-genre category like that, and to represent country music in that category, I can't even tell you how happy I am about that."
In Anaheim, before an enthusiastic crowd of instrument makers, sellers and their friends -- the biggest gathering the Taylor booth has ever pulled in, according to company chief Bob Taylor, who rattled off an impressive list of previous rock and pop stars his company endorses -- Swift noted that she was 14 when she wrote her recent hit, "Our Song."
It may be the first No. 1 country hit that got its premiere at a ninth-grade talent show.
All the attention has put a lot of weight on her teenage shoulders, but her mother, Andrea Swift, said she and her husband have tried to ensure that their daughter stays focused on her love of music.
