TV talk show hosts love Swift because she possesses such a rare collection of traits. With her cover girl beauty and effervescent personality, she's great on camera, and she brings with her a suitcase full of songs that aren't ashamed to voice the perspective of a living, breathing and sometimes heartbroken teenager.
"I usually generalize it and say I like to write songs about boys, but it's more than that," she said over a breakfast of what she deemed "probably the best French toast I've had in my life," along with a couple of scrambled eggs and a glass of fresh orange juice. "I like to write songs about relationships, and the steps that take us to a heartbreak, or the steps that take us to falling in love and all that's in between. It's my favorite thing to write about [because] you never run out of material and you keep coming back to it.
"It's like moths to the flame, no matter how many times you're hurt by love, no matter how many times you've gotten your heart broken, you'll always come back, no matter how long it takes," she added. "It could be years, but you will be attracted to love again."
That's the thing about being a teenager: Love is always a matter of life and death, every relationship either Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming or Tristan and Isolde. Yet even at a relatively tender age, Swift has figured out how to view her experiences -- and those of her BFF Abigail and others who share their deep, dark secrets -- with an artist's eye.
"I think as a songwriter you need to have a completely wild imagination about what could be and what might have been," Swift said. "Some of your most heartbreaking material is what could have been, and some of your most romantic material is what could be."
Her imagination takes her to a number of different places on the new album. On "You're Not Sorry," she begins to see that the apologies she's hearing from a wayward boyfriend are really those of a first-class liar. "White Horse" addresses the sobering realization that romantic fantasy doesn't always pan out ("I'm not your princess/ This ain't no fairy tale") and "You Belong With Me" is the old story of someone who thinks she's the true love of a boy who's involved with someone else ("She doesn't get your sense of humor like I do/ She'll never know your story like I do"). The utterly endearing "Fifteen" rolls out a bit of advice to an incoming high school freshman.
