Taylor Swift

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.

Taylor Swift doesn't bat a blue eye at rewriting history. Take the 18-year-old's latest single, "Love Story." It's all about romance and destiny -- two subjects that often occupy her teenage brain. She even invokes the names of the world's most celebrated star-crossed lovers in this sunny hit that's steadily climbing the country singles chart. It's Romeo and Juliet with a significant difference: Nobody dies.

TAYLOR SWIFT knew early on that the odds were against her getting noticed in this town, filled as it is to the Stetson brim with men and women chasing dreams of stardom. That was apparent to her on her first trip here six years ago, when she began knocking on doors in hopes of landing a recording contract.

Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood each took a pair of trophies home at the 41st Country Music Assn. Awards ceremony in Nashville, but the night's fairy-tale win went to a teenage singer-songwriter who hasn't even finished high school. Taylor Swift, a brash Nashville transplant from Pennsylvania who started knocking on music-industry doors when she was all of 11, won the CMA's Horizon Award for the year's most promising new artist.

LILY ALLEN Singer-rapper A street-smart rebel with a privileged background, this feisty singer and rapper could be the one to finally bridge the gap that keeps British pop stars from making a mark in the U.S. Allen conquered England in 2006 with a MySpace-sparked campaign that culminated in a No. 1 single, "Smile," one of many engaging tracks from a debut album packed with smart, ska-flavored pop confections. The album, "Alright, Still," comes out here on Jan.

About a third of the way through Taylor Swift's Friday night set, the young country-pop singer transformed the stage at a sold-out Staples Center into a high school library. While projections of bookshelves lighted up the two-tiered set, Swift sat at a table with a scruffy, square-jawed dreamboat and, in an endearing monologue, lamented his dudely inability to see the obvious. "Every day, like clockwork, he would sit down and talk to me . . . about his girlfriend," Swift said, to peals of commiseration from the heavily teenage and female crowd.