TAYLOR Swift has proven why she is the world's pop sweetheart. Currently touring Australia, the US singer, 22, talks about how love is central to all her songwriting.
With over 22 million albums sold, Taylor Swift is one of the brightest stars in the pop firmament, with a wisdom and presence that belie her age.
She freely admits that she writes straight from the heart and that her albums document her life and loves - and are often directed at a particular person. "I will always remember where a song started and they start out very personal - me singing this to another person, delivering a message that I could only say the way I wanted to in the form of a song," she says.
"Then it goes out into the world and becomes whatever the fans want it to become."
Swift has been romantically linked with John Mayer, her Valentine's Day co-star Taylor Lautner (earning them the collective moniker T-Squared) and actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
While she describes herself as being "happily single" and "really good at it" right now, she admits that love remains her creative driving force and will be front and centre on her next album as well.
"Love is at the centre of everything I write about," she says. "It's interesting because I feel like I have learned so much in life but I keep going back to love when I write songs because I just can't figure it out.
"Even when I am single and content in that there is always something to look back on or look forward to when it comes to love.
"Love to me is the great unknown and the great goal, the great ghost - it's really everything to me when it comes to writing.
"So when I come up with lyrics, they always end up being love letters or goodbye letters or apologies or frustration or venting and it usually has a recipient."
That being the case, does she think prospective partners are ever wary of approaching her for fear of ending up in a song?
"I don't know because you never know who thinks about talking to you and decides not to," she says with a laugh.
"But for me, I never really have in conversation come up with the idea that they are scared to talk to me because I might write a song about them."
Swift arrived in Australia last week for the final leg of her Speak Now tour. She played nearly 100 shows in 17 countries last year, but she says she is saving the best for last.
The highly visual show is inspired by her love of music theatre pieces such as Wicked and she treats each of her songs as though they were part of a musical.
"Australia is one of my favourite places to go and especially to tour," says Swift, who counts Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman among her Nashville neighbours and friends, and also invited Aussie country star Adam Brand to support some of her US shows last year.
"Going to Australia for us always feels more like a vacation than actually working so it did seem appropriate to save the best for last."
Having appeared in TV's CSI and the star-studded rom-com Valentine's Day, Swift is adding yet another string to her fiddle with a voice performance in The Lorax, the animated big-screen treatment of the beloved Dr Seuss book, which opens here on March 29.
Swift, who has donated time and money generously to disaster relief funds including the Victoria Bushfire Appeal and has lent her celebrity to a range of good causes, says she was attracted as much by the movie's message of preservation and conservation as the opportunity to be in a fun film with Zac Efron, Danny DeVito and Ed Helms.
"I really loved The Lorax when I was growing up because it taught me the lesson 'don't be one of those people who doesn't know what they have until it's gone'," she says.
"I carry that lesson with me through my whole life because it really resonated with me to be grateful for what you have and really understand how valuable it is if you have a family that you love and a job that you love and happiness and contentment. Don't waste it away."
She has also teamed up with alt-country duo Civil Wars and producing great, T-Bone Burnett, to record Safe And Sound, the lead single from the soundtrack to the eagerly anticipated film version of The Hunger Games.
"Right now I am 22 years old and I want to learn as much as I possibly can," she says.
"I want to learn from people who I feel are the best at what they do and I feel like T-Bone Burnett and Civil Wars are the best at what they do.
Swift has carried that collaborative spirit into the making of her next, fourth album.
She recorded Speak Now almost entirely on her own, just to prove she could do it, and has enjoyed bringing in collaborators on her new songs - even if she refuses to identify them yet.
"For me it was very important with Speak Now to show people that I could be my own writer and that it really is something that I love doing by myself," she says.
"It was something that I always wanted to check off my list of things to do - write a record by myself.
"Now I am in a different place where I really want to go out and learn as much as I possibly can and experiment by writing with and working with different people and still maintain a backbone of lyrics and stories I am proud of telling."
The Love Story hit-maker asked Kevin McGuire, 18, to escort her to the ceremony in Las Vegas on April 1, after she turned down the New Jersey schoolboy's initial invitation for her to be his prom date.
wrote him a special message on Facebook, saying: "Kevin I'm so sorry but I won't be able to make it to your prom.
"But I was wondering, the ACM Awards are coming up. Would you be my date?"
The leukaemia sufferer, who is battling the disease for the second time since he was first diagnosed at age 13, told the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Obviously I said 'yes'. The ACM Awards is a lot better than senior prom."
The kind gesture is not out of character for Swift, who is renowned as a down-to-earth, country-pop darling.
Swift won two Grammys at last month's awards, bringing her tally up to six.
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