Taylor Swift

Nashville's latest blonde beauty Taylor Swift began performing at the ripe old age of 10. Swift picked up the guitar at 12 and quickly wrote her first song. That was all it took, a future singing/songwriting star was born. The young singer caught the attention of Big Machine Records label head Scott Borchetta, and the rest will be written in the pages of music history.

Like the recent release by American Idol castaway Kellie Pickler, Swift's self-titled debut isn't really country music in the truest sense of the word. This is pop-country with steel guitars, mandolin and fiddle. Good music, granted, but more pop than country. Swift is a mini Sheryl Crow, a songstress and vocalist of impressive skill. How many songwriters get to put the very first song they ever wrote on their debut album? "The Outside" was written when Swift was just 12. The breezy track, while not the best song on here, is well-crafted and lyrically mature.

A straight-A high school student, Swift is an old soul. Songs like the yearning "Teardrops On My Guitar" and the emotionally raw "Cold As You" sound like they were written by someone twice Swift's age. The latter is a heartbreaking song with chilling steel guitar. She may be a teenager, but Swift sounds all grownup here. The lyrical first single "Tim McGraw," about a girl who associates a summer love with one of McGraw's songs, is as good as anything on radio right now. Swift possesses a honeydew voice that, like her, seems much older than it really is.

"Picture To Burn" finds Swift adopting a bit of an attitude. The young singer sounds like a cross between Kelly Clarkson and angst-riddled popster Avril Lavigne on this one. The girl has a great sense of what works in a song, not to mention a great sense of humor. "Go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy, that's fine/ I'll tell mine you're gay," Swift sings. For the banjo stoked "Should've Said No," Swift ditches Clarkson but sticks with Lavigne. A cheating boyfriend gets an earful as a sawing fiddle and a descending chord progression add weight to Swift's words.

"Stay Beautiful" is the closest Swift comes to traditional country on the album. Vocally, the singer still sounds like a younger version of Sheryl Crow, but musically she dips into the past for a shuffling number with pretty mandolin fills and cat-skinning Dobro licks. The album closes with the upbeat "Our Song." A buoyant beat gets hitched to rolling banjo and fiddle and more slithery Dobro.

If there's a better debut from a new female artist under the age of twenty this year, it hasn't made it onto this scribe's desk.

By Todd Sterling