County singer’s Swift rise

Ernest A. Jasmin, for the Northwest Guardian

Taylor Swift may not have amassed a ton of life experience, having just turned 17 in December. But the rising star has found lots from her life that’s worth immortalizing in song, as fans will notice Saturday at the Tacoma Dome when she opens for country veteran George Strait.

“I always make a joke. Half the people in Hendersonville think I’ve written songs about ’em,” the singer said during a phone interview Wednesday, referring to the Tennessee town where she’s spent her teen years. “That’s kind of everybody’s claim to fame around there.”

For starters, you don’t want to cheat on the girl. She’ll put you in a song. Might even encode your name in the lyrics, as she did with the philandering inspiration for “Should’ve Said No,” a song from her self-titled and recently gold-certified debut album.

Then there’s the source material for radio hit “Tim McGraw.” “I actually wrote most of the song in math class,” she chuckled. “At the time, I was datin’ a guy who was about to go off to college, and I knew we were gonna break up. So I started thinkin’ about all the things I knew would remind him of me. And one of the first things that came to mind was one of my favorite songs by Tim McGraw.”

Swift, who grew up on a farm in Wyomissing, Pa., started singing at age 10. She sang the national anthem at a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game at age 11 and started playing guitar and writing songs at 12.

She signed a record deal with Big Machine Records at 14 and was churning out roughly a song a day around the time she wrote “Tim McGraw” in less than 15 minutes. So she hardly expected to have a hit.

“I overlooked it,” she said. “I didn’t play it for anybody for several months. And one time I just, you know, kind of on a whim played it for my record label president (Scott Borchetta). And he looked at me in the eye and said, ‘Well, that’s your first single.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I guess that’s how it works.’”

Like that song, her next single, “Teardrops on My Guitar,” could be a journal entry.

“It’s about this guy I sat next to in class, and I was totally in the friend zone,” she said. “He’d talk to me about his girlfriend and how happy they were – blah, blah, blah. And I had the biggest crush on him. And I’d just sit there and listen to him every single day.

“Eventually, I just got sick of it and wrote this song with his name in it. I never told him that I liked him, but I did write that song about him.”

Not that that sort of thing tends to remain a secret, especially when you grow up in a small town. Swift assumes the object of her desire knows, because his girlfriend’s cousin showed up at an autograph session in Memphis, saying he knew whom the song was about.

“I’m so stupid,” she said. “I write these blatantly obvious songs about people, and then I just get so surprised they figured it out. It’s so funny,”

Swift expects to see the final cut for the video she recently shot for “Teardrops,” which tells her story of unrequited love.

“It’s really cool to be able to shoot a video for something that’s happened in real life, especially when you didn’t get the guy,” she said. “You definitely feel like you’ve gotten the better end of the deal when you’re on a set shooting a music video.”

Swift called on actor friend Tyler Hilton (“One Tree Hill,” “Walk the Line”) to play the part of her oblivious love interest. She had him in mind when he joined her onstage at a concert in California.

“We ended up singing a duet,” she said. “And I asked him onstage in front of everybody if he would be in my video. And of course the crowd’s goin’ crazy. And he was like, ‘Well, yeah, I guess.’ I kind of pressured him into it.”

What: George Strait in concert, with Taylor Swift and Ronnie Milsap

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Tacoma Dome

Tickets: $49.50 to $59.50

Information: Ticketmaster, 253-627-8497 in Tacoma, 206-628-0888 in Seattle