Taylor in Kellie’s “Best Days of Your Life” Video

The Boot: Kellie Pickler Predicts ‘Insane’ Tour With Taylor

02.17.09

Kellie Pickler can’t wait to hit the road with her good friend, Taylor Swift. 

“It’s gonna be insane,” Pickler says of the upcoming ‘Fearless’ tour, headlined by the friend she says is like a sister to her. “She’s known all over the world and I’m very honored that she asked me to go on the road with her.”

Swift’s set on the tour is said to include a fairytale castle, numerous costume changes and five guitars. Pickler says she is looking forward to seeing the elaborate stage.

“I’m anxious to see it now that she’s got it finished,” she says. “I think we’re having a tour meeting soon.” 

Pickler says the shows will likely include a duet or two with her pal, in addition to their individual shows. The six month tour, which is currently booked into October, will also feature the group Gloriana. It kicks off April 23 in Evansville, Ind.

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Taylor Blogs: Putting off packing by blogging. :)

02.05.09

Hello there,

So I’ve been rehearsing all week with my band. I get up early in the morning, do phone interviews on the way to rehearsal, and practice all day. It’s been so much fun playing the new songs! We’re rehearsing for the 3 shows we’re doing before the Fearless tour kicks off in April. We’re playing the San Antonio Rodeo, the Houston Rodeo, and Plant City, FL because they’re awesome and I wanted to play there even if it was before the tour started. So we’re working up the new songs and practicing for these shows, and I’m so excited. Today Miley came to our rehearsal and we were working up the performance for the Grammys. We worked it up, practiced a bunch, and then ate an entire pizza. 

I can’t believe it but the first show for the Fearless Tour goes on sale tomorrow!! It’s not the first show we play on the tour (our opening night is in Indiana), but it’s the first show to put tickets on sale. It’s the LA show at the Staples Center. First of all, I can’t believe I’m playing the Staples Center. Wow. This is just.. Wow. I hope people show up. 

I think about this tour all day, every day. I’m so excited that Kellie’s coming out to open up– She’s been one of my best friends since we toured together a few years ago, and it’s gonna be hilarious to be on the road with her again. I can’t wait to go over to her bus and hang out with her and all of her tiny little animals that she has rapidly acquired. Between the cat, the dog, the snake, and the monkey… It’s going to be a trip. Or a zoo. Or both. I love her and I’m so lucky she’s coming out with me.

Also, there’s this new group called Gloriana that’s coming out with us. They’re AMAZING and I love their new single “Wild at Heart”. I heard it and immediately knew I wanted them on this tour. Check them out, I think you’ll agree. Everyone in Nashville is buzzing about them and now I get to have them out with ME this summer. Yessssss. 

I’m headed off to bed now. Tomorrow I leave again for 50 years. Actually, a few weeks. But basically, I have some major packing to do.

lovelovelove
-T-

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Taylor and Miley Interviewed on Ryan Seacrest

Taylor and Miley Cyrus were on Ryan Seacrest this morning to talk about their Grammy duet and more. Tehy duo will bee performing “Fifteen” off of Fearless and the girls talk about their friendship and growing up. It’s a great interview!

Download it Here!

CMT Blog: Taylor Swift Before She Was “Taylor Swift”

By Whitney Self 01.30.09

I  took this photo of Taylor Swiftat the 2006 CMA Music Festival. She was singing on the Riverfront Park stage and was introduced as a new face in country music. I could tell she was a bit nervous and rather timid onstage, but she seemed to charm the crowd nonetheless. As I was looking through the viewfinder, clicking away, I knew she had something special.

Today she announced her Fearless Tour 2009 with Kellie Pickler and a new act, Gloriana. I couldn’t help but think back to this summer day when she was just a fresh-faced, 16-year-old hopeful. This was about the time she had released “Tim McGraw,” a sweet little ditty she had written in high school. This was long before she let anyone know about Drew or her“Teardrops,” before she had a “Picture to Burn” or advice in “Should’ve Said No.” This was prior to the days she would reign as the Academy of Country Music’s top new female vocalist, before she had become a triple-platinum selling artist, before she would become a top-selling artist throughout all genres … and before national stardom.

In just three years, Taylor Swift has lived the dreams most could only imagine. It makes me smile to think back when she was just a newcomer. Look at her now, aFearless favorite.

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People: Taylor Swift Won’t Be Lonely on the Road

By Eileen Finan

Taylor Swift – who has topped the Billboard chart for the past eight weeks with her second album, Fearless – has announced her first headlining tour, which will take her to 52 cities over six months. 

Swift, 19, will officially kick off her Fearless Tour 2009, which she calls “a dream come true,” on April 23 in Evansville, Ill., immediately followed by Jonesboro, Ark., and St. Louis, Mo. (Tickets go on sale Feb. 6 at 10 a.m. PST. For a complete tour schedule, check her official site.)

One tour must-have? Her BFF, Kellie Pickler, who will accompany her as a featured artist. 

Calling Pickler “the older sister I never had,” Swift met her in 2007 when they toured with Brad Paisley. “My mom looks at [Kellie] as a second daughter – it’s a family thing at this point,” Swift has told PEOPLE. 

The singer’s show will feature multiple costume changes and an illuminated fairy-castle – and the new country group Gloriana. 

Despite the extravagant set, the singer – who just launched a line of affordable dresses at Wal-Mart – says she’s mindful of the tough economy, so she plans to start ticket prices at around $20 in most markets. 

“I want to be sure that everyone has the opportunity to come see my show,” she said. 

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Taylor Swift Plots First Headlining Tour

01.30.09 Jonathan Cohen

Billboard Magazine

As expected, Taylor Swift will embark on her first headlining tour this spring, beginning April 23 in Evansville, Ind. The 52-city trek will feature “multiple costume changes” and a stage with a “fairy-tale castle,” according to Swift’s publicist.
Swift is touring in support of her sophomore album, “Fearless,” which is so far the top seller of 2009 with 287,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It has spent eight straight weeks at No. 1 on The Billboard 200, and since its release last November, it has shifted 2.4 million.

Before the tour, Swift will play three one-offs, including a March 20 show before 71,00 fans at Houston’s Livestock Show and Rodeo. Kellie Pickler and new act Gloriana will open all dates. For the full tour itinerary, visit TaylorSwift.com.

After the North American run, the plan is for Swift to play fall dates in the United Kingdom, and somewhere along the way Japan will be part of the picture.

“It will be super thrilling for her fans in the States to see photos of her in front of Buckingham Palace, downtown Tokyo and then the next time she’s in Cedar Rapids [Iowa] she’ll be that much a bigger star, but still Taylor — approachable,” Scott Borchetta, the president of Swift’s label Big Machine, told Billboard last fall. 

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Best Days of her Life

By Gary Graff 01.24.09

“I LIKE pressure,” says 18-year-old Taylor Swift, whose self-titled debut album has sold more than 3.5 million copies since 2006.

“With [Fearless] a lot of people are watching me to see if the first album was a fluke and I really like that. It’s fun to have people watching to see what’s going to happen.

“Honestly, I think that the music will rise to the top and I think that people will realise that, this whole two years I’ve been out on the road, I’ve been writing and making the best second record I could possibly make and I’m really excited about it. I’m not worried about a sophomore slump.”

So far Swift’s prediction is holding true. Released in November, Fearless debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart and within six weeks had notched up sales of more than 2 million.

It was the best rollout in 2008 by any female artist and the year’s top-selling country album by a male or female.

Her new single, White Horse, marked the sixth time in 2008 that a Swift single had debuted in the top 20 of a Billboard chart – the first time any artist has accomplished that in a calendar year.

All of this, of course, follows the prodigious path ploughed by her self-titled debut, which introduced the world to a precocious but poised artist who had the performing and songwriting chops of someone two or three times her age. Besides its triple-platinum sales, the album spawned five hits, including Tim McGraw and Teardrops On My Guitar, while Our Song made her the youngest artist to write and perform a No. 1 country hit. Swift also snagged a Grammy Award nomination for best new artist.

The achievements have been piling up ever since. Swift contributed the song Change to Team USA’s 2008 Summer Olympics soundtrack album. Her television special CMT Crossroads with Def Leppard drew more than 4.5 million viewers for its first four showings and she has written a song, You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home, for Hannah Montana: The Movie, in which she’ll also have a cameo.

“For me every day’s sort of like a bonus day, because I never expected to be here,” says Swift, who graduated from high school earlier this year after completing a home-school course. “I put out an album and thought, best-case scenario, this could possibly, maybe, go gold. That would be awesome. Then it went gold and it went platinum and double platinum and triple platinum and I’m just sitting there, like: ‘Are you kidding me?’

“I mean, it’s a good album but I had nothing to do with the fact that it sold 3 million albums,” she says. “I didn’t go out and buy all those copies, you know? People just liked it. Which, to me, is the coolest thing.”  

Swift can relate, because she came to music first as a fan, growing up in the small town of Wyomissing in south-eastern Pennsylvania. Her grandmother was an opera singer but Swift herself developed a taste for country and rock.

“Def Leppard was played in my house a lot,” she says.

Her own interest in music surfaced early.

“When I was little,” Swift says, “my parents would take me to see Disney movies and I’d walk out of the theatre singing every single song from the movie after hearing them once. It kind of freaked them out.

“[Music] was just something that fascinated me,” she says. “If there would be music playing in a room and other things were going on, the only thing I wanted to concentrate on was the music.”

The young Swift quickly found her own musical hero.

“My mom bought a LeAnn Rimes album for me when I was six,” she says, “and I just fell in love with it. There was something about her that really drew me to her music. I identified with the fact that she was only seven or eight years older than me and she was able to put out an album at 13. I thought that was really cool.

“And then I started to explore all the other amazing female country-music singers of the ’90s, like Faith Hill and Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks. I absolutely fell in love with country music at that point.”

Swift and her family soon began looking for opportunities for the aspiring artist to show her stuff. At 10 she was singing at fairs, festivals, karaoke contests and talent shows around her home town. She made some initially unsuccessful trips to Nashville, channelling the rejection – from the music business and from other children – into an early song called The Outside. She won praise for her performance at a US Open tennis tournament and ultimately landed a recording contract after Scott Borchetta of Big Machine Records saw her perform at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville.

By this time Swift, who had relocated to Tennessee, had enough experience to have adopted a professional, level-headed demeanour.

“My parents raised me to believe that the most annoying thing in the world is people who feel that they’re entitled to success or fame or whatever,” she says. “I’ve just never been that way. I learned early on how bragging and hyping yourself up really isn’t a good way to promote yourself.

“I think it’s just better to do the work and go out there on stage and show people that you love doing this and it’s your favorite thing in the world.”  

To her, success was and is surprising – “I never, ever expected to be played on pop radio,” she admits – but that perspective gave her a sense of balance as she started making Fearless, which she had an even greater hand in making than her debut album. She wrote seven of its 13 tracks by herself and also had significant input into the production.

“I need an album to be signature and I need it to be special,” says Swift, who also wrote a song, Best Days Of Your Life, for the new album by her friend, former American Idol contestant Kellie Pickler, “and I need people to know that I put everything I have into this album. It’s the same kind of album I made two years ago, just two years older.”

Like Taylor Swift, Fearless is filled with country songs that nonetheless have pop polish and plenty of crossover appeal or, as Swift prefers to call it, “spillover” appeal. The lyrics cover some personal territory.Forever & Always is about her break-up with pop star Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, while Hey Stephenis about Love And Theft’s Stephen Barker Liles, who toured with Swift, and Fifteen chronicles freshman-year exploits with her best friend, Abigail.

“I really tried to not write songs about being on the road and sleeping in hotel rooms and the tour bus,” Swift says, “because I got albums when I was younger and there would be songs about that sort of thing and I couldn’t really relate to it.

“So I really try to write more about what I feel and guys and love, because that’s what fascinates me more than anything else: love and what it does to us and how we treat people and how they treat us.”

That’s scary terrain for an artist of any age, no less for one as young as Swift. But she says it’s all part of being, well, fearless.

“What the word ‘fearless’ means to me is not that you don’t have fears,” she says. “It’s not that you’re not afraid of anything. Being fearless, to me, means that you’re afraid of a lot of things but you jump anyway.

“I think that’s what we’re doing on this album,” Swift says, “and it’s what I want to do for as long as I make music, which I want to be forever, so there you go: I want to be fearless forever.”

The New York Times

Fearless is out now. Taylor Swift plays The Factory Theatre on March 12.

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Taylor Swift Concert Sold Out At Strawberry Fest

PLANT CITY – The Florida Strawberry Festival has its first sold-out show of the season. 

Reserved seats to the March 1 concert by Taylor Swift have all been sold, festival General Manager Paul Davis said today. At $45 per seat, the tickets were the priciest of any of the 22 headline concerts at the 2009 festival.

The last tickets for Swift’s 7:30 p.m. performance sold around lunchtime today.

Even if you didn’t get a ticket, you may not be totally out of luck. The festival makes available a few thousand free seats in its bleachers for each performance on a first-come, first served basis.

Reserved tickets remain for the other entertainers, including George Jones, Kellie Pickler, Jake Owen, Third Day, Rodney Atkins, Jeff Foxworthy, Kool & The Gang, Jessica Simpson and others.

For information call (813) 752-9194.

The festival is Feb. 26 through March 8.

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Taylor Featured on Sexy Stars of Country Music

Start playing around 3:15