2010 has been a good year for Taylor Swift. Her latest album Speak Now has gone triple platinum and America's new sweetheart is proud of the notches on her passport. The country superstar now wants exotic India to be her next pit-stop.
The Love Story hitmaker, whose Indian fans have been campaigning for the same through a special 'We want Taylor Swift in India' page on Facebook, said that she will not come and go incognito like others when she finally visits.
"I would like to visit India. I will make an announcement when I have plans to visit the country," Taylor told PTI in an e-mail interview.
She was still a teenager when she won her first Grammy, in 2008 when her total haul was four golden gramophones, and is a global superstar at the age of 21.
But Taylor who balances her Nashville wholesomeness with some rather caustic lyrics about ex-boyfriends, says that she has no plans to go of the rails like many of her pop predecessors.
Infact, the statuesque blonde beauty who has reportedly found love in the arms of Hollywood heartthrob Jake Gyllenhaal says that she is rather a girl-next-door.
"I enjoy all the fame that I have got. I still hang out with my friends, I still walk in to a nearby grocery store and I still do all those things that anyone at this age would. But at the same time, I feel really lucky. These are wild dreams I had as a kid and finally they are coming true," said Taylor who has been hailed as music's 'anti-Britney', with her lovelorn-yet-innocent ballads untouched by the aggressive sexuality preferred by pop starlets like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Momsen.
Her rise to fame has been uncharacteristically free of controversy, except the headline grabbing episode where rapper Kanye West stormed the stage during her acceptance speech at the MTV Video Awards.
But all that is a part of growing up, says Taylor who added a neat $45 million to her bank balance in 2010.
"I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it," said the singer-songwriter who was listed as the most commercially successful country artist in music history with over 28 million digital tracks sold.
It is a lot achieved at such a young age but Taylor had started working towards it more than a decade ago.
Born in Pennsylvania to father Scott, a stockbroker, and mother Andrea, a homemaker, she grew up with her younger brother Austin on a Christmas tree farm, which her father ran as a hobby.
At the age of 11, she made a demo tape of her tracks and started knocking on the doors of record companies in Nashville, the mecca of country music.
It became a weekly ritual, with her mother driving her around town until the entire family relocated to Nashville a few years later when Taylor landed a job in Sony as a songwriter at the age of 13.
And her ability to draw a connect with her words, be it about heartbreak or the pangs of growing up, has kept Taylor in good stead. Her songs are replete with personal references and many a former flame, famous names include Joe Jonas and John Mayer, has been castigated so in public, with her guitar keeping company.
Speak Now, released under the label of Universal Music, in her own words is Taylor's diary of the past two years and she is excited for the fans to hear her stories and confessions.
"Speak Now is about the last 2 years of my life and the people who have been a part of my life. I know I don't always say the right thing at the right time or speak up when I should, but I write it all down. I get my guitar and a pen and all of a sudden, I have a chance to say exactly what I meant to say in real life. Some of the things I wrote about are things everyone saw me go through. Some of the things I wrote about are things nobody ever knew about," said the singer.
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