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Taylor Swift doesn't bat a blue eye at rewriting
history.
Take the 18-year-old's latest single, "Love Story." It's all about romance and destiny - two subjects that often occupy her teenage brain. She even invokes the names of the world's most celebrated star-crossed lovers in this sunny hit that's steadily climbing the country singles chart.
It's Romeo and Juliet with a significant difference: Nobody dies.
"I was going through a situation like that where I could relate," the energetic singer-songwriter said recently on a visit to Los Angeles. "I used to be in high school where you see [a boyfriend] every day. Then I was in a situation where it wasn't so easy for me, and I wrote this song because I could relate to the whole Romeo and Juliet thing. I was really inspired by that story.
"Except for the ending," she quickly added.
Whether it's Shakespeare, dating or a disintegrating music business, Swift is only too willing to reshape the rules according to her own ideas about how things ought to be. She's demonstrated that repeatedly since she was a brazen 12-year-old who went door to door down Nashville's famed Music Row of record company offices saying, "Hi, I'm Taylor! I write songs, and I think you should sign me."
When most of her peers were busy with after-school sports or drama club, she would head off every day to her job at Sony/ATV Music Publishing where, at 14, she was hired to write more songs, as a professional in the country music capital.
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