INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Country music’s next teen-age star

George Strait, Ronnie Milsap, Taylor Swift
Conseco Fieldhouse
Thursday, Feb. 22, 7:30 p.m. $51.50-$61.50

The last liner note of Taylor Swift’s debut CD is not your typical thank you. It reads: “P.S.: To all the boys who thought they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 11 songs written about you. HA.”

According to Swift, she included that dedication in an effort to “do something different and display my personality.”

The 17-year-old Swift’s self-titled debut CD has spawned one Top 5 single “Tim McGraw,” a ballad where the singer hopes that an old boyfriend thinks of her whenever he hears a McGraw song on the radio. The album is a collection of songs that Swift has either written or co-written over the past five years.

“There’s a song on the CD, ‘The Outside,’ that I wrote when I was 12,” she says. “I’ve been writing songs since then. When I got a publishing deal with Sony Publishing [at age 14], I decided I was going to work as hard as I could at being a songwriter.”

Swift is currently working as the opening act for two country music legends, George Strait and Ronnie Milsap, and she admitted she’s learned a few things from Strait.

“I asked him … about how much fun he seemed to be having on stage,” Swift says. “George asked me if I wanted to know his secret, to which I quickly replied, ‘Yes!’ And he said, ‘About 25 years!’”