Taylor Swift Photo Courtesy of Big Machine Records

Lyrics became an obsession. She found writing songs was a way to process the intense thoughts and feelings she was experiencing as she walked the halls of her old middle school in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Before long she was singing and practicing guitar for hours every afternoon. Her total focus on music, however, was a little puzzling to her peers.

"I sang country music," recalls Taylor. "I played guitar. In class I would sit there writing down lyrics. And I don’t think they got that, really."

Taylor slowly found herself growing more and more distant from her classmates. But that sense of alienation, while painful at times, proved to be inspiring. "I found myself watching their reactions and their emotions mostly to figure out what I was doing so wrong. But then I realized if I could watch these people and write it all down, it would make a good song." The result was "The Outside," an early Swift composition so strong, it is on her new album.

"When she started writing music, some of the first things she wrote about was being unhappy and left out," Andrea remembers. "But it was an outlet, so I was thrilled that she found a way to express it and let it go."

As Taylor become more determined to follow her dreams of being a country music artist, the Swift family made the inevitable move to Nashville. It wasn’t long before her talents – especially her writing -- caught the attention of Music Row.

"I’ve never seen anything like it, to be honest with you," says Scott Borchetta, president and founder of Big Machine Records. He signed Taylor last year after her demo tape found its way to the top of the considerable pile on his desk. "There’s something about her songwriting that’s just extraordinary. She has everyday life come through and it comes out through this amazing filter. I’ve had the good fortune to be working with a lot of great songwriters. And I’ll put her in the room with anybody."

One person who has been in the room with Taylor is Liz Rose, a Nashville writer who has collaborated with her on several songs, including her debut single and first hit, "Tim McGraw." "We wrote every Tuesday at four in the afternoon," says Rose. "She’d blow into the office and you’d hear about her day at school -- this is what happened to some girl or some guy. She’d grab a handful of chocolate, walk into the writer’s room and shut the door. Until she got into that room, she was teenager. But once that door closed--she was a writer."

For Rose, those Tuesday afternoons would prove to be her easiest writing appointment of the week. "She always came in with an idea," marvels Rose. "Most of her songs are about something she has just gone through that day or that weekend. With ‘Tim McGraw’ she came in with the idea and melody. She knew exactly what she wanted. She is so fast and so good. But it’s not that she’s in a hurry. It’s that she’s got to get it out."

"I laugh when people call me a co-writer," continues Rose. "I just take dictation."

The response to her first single, which is currently a Top 20 hit, took Taylor totally by surprise. "I wrote this song with Liz on piano in 15 minutes after school," she remembers. "We played it for Scott, the president of my label, on a fluke -- 'Hey! Listen to this song I wrote called "Tim McGraw.'