Taylor Swift Studies Shania Twain

June 26, 2009 — Taylor Swift was all of five years old when Shania Twain released her ground-breaking album The Woman In Me in 1995, thus through almost all the formative years of her life, Taylor has never known a world without Shania in it.

Not surprisingly, Canada’s sweetheart is a big influence on Taylor, who’s taken particular notice of Shania’s continued impact seven years after the release of her last album of all-new material.

"Every single award show it was, 'Where's Shania? When's she gonna come back? When's she gonna put out something new?"' Taylor told the Canadian Press. "The fact that she's so memorable means she's done such an incredible job at really implementing herself in country music to where she's never, ever gonna be gone. And I love that."

Shania did that by writing songs that were catchy, memorable and distinctly different from the material of her fellow country artists, which Taylor has also done. In addition, Shania’s tours backed her songs with a significant amount of choreography and production. Taylor, not surprisingly, has incorporated a huge amount of those elements into her first headlining tour.

"I wanted to make it more theatrical than anything I'd seen in the country shows that I'd opened up for," Taylor said. "What I thought would be cool was to have a big element of the tour revolve around the theatrics of my songs, because really they're all just dramatizations of what I've gone through. So I wanted to take that opportunity to show the audience what I'm seeing in my head when I'm playing these songs."

Taylor’s taking a breather from headlining this weekend. She opens for Keith Urban on two shows in the Midwest. She returns to the Fearless Tour July 8 with a performance in Calgary, Alberta.