Taylor Swift eyes country music’s top prize

Taylor Swift has gone from strength to strength since her high-profile run-in with rapper Kanye West at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.

The teenage country/pop singer not only delivered Saturday Night Live's highest-ratings of the season last weekend when she appeared as the NBC show's guest host, but she is also tipped to win the highly coveted 'entertainer of the year' title at tonight's Country Music Association's annual awards in Nashville, Tennessee.

Swift, who writes, sings and now produces her own songs, has become massively successful after finding favour with both country and mainstream pop audiences alike. Aged just 19, she earned more than $18m in the past year and, according to music sales tracker Nielsen Soundscan, was America's highest-selling artist of 2008. Part of her success has been put down to the fact that she is seen by Americans as family-friendly - without employing any overt sexuality - as well as gaining a connection with fans thanks to her penchant for Twitter and Facebook.

Tonight Swift will be up against some of country music's longest-serving and most popular singers - all of them men. They are the four-time winner and reigning champion Kenny Chesney, Nicole Kidman's husband Keith Urban (who won in 2005), Brad Paisley and two-time winner George Strait - a country music veteran who, although he has been nominated a total of 17 times, last won in 1990.

Swift is the first solo female artist to be nominated since Faith Hill, who won best female vocalist in 2000. An Entertainment Weekly readers' poll places Swift as the strong favourite to win entertainer of the year, with 55 per cent saying she should win.

Should Swift clinch the title she will become the youngest person to win the prize. The award would also cap off a particularly excellent week for the teenage crossover sensation - on top of her NBC ratings success, it was also announced that her eponymous 2006 debut album had become the longest-charting album this decade on the Billboard 200, spending three years in the charts. And last night she won 'song of the year' at the BMI Country Awards for her song Love Story.

Meanwhile Swift has been named one of People magazine's '100 most beautiful people in the world' for two years' running. And she may very well end up as 2009's top selling artist in the United States thanks to her latest album Fearless, which has topped the Billboard 200 in 11 non-consecutive weeks.

It would be a fine riposte to Kanye West's very public assertion at the MTV Video Music Awards that Beyonce should have won Swift's best female video award. The normally unrepentant rapper apologised twice for snatching the microphone from Swift live on air to make his point. Maybe the young country singer is due a third.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:Emily Christianson, the Los Angeles Times: "Forget Nashville, Taylor Swift is the biggest thing going in pop music right now... The young country artist has crossed over, to say the least, appealing to audiences that are comfortable with a little twang, as well as a bit of John Mayer. Whether it's appearing on Saturday Night Live or rapping at award shows, Swift has risen to the top by mixing in a little Hollywood gloss with her two-step."

Craig Rose, the Hollywood Reporter: "She's not just another oversexed, underdressed prefab pop Barbie, but rather the girl next door who's had her heart broken and takes refuge in music she actually sings, plays and writes."

Jody Rosen, Rolling Stone: "It's hard not to be won over by the guilelessness of Swift's high-school-romance narratives ("She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts/She's cheer captain, and I'm on the bleachers"), with their starry-eyed lyrics about princesses and ball gowns and kissing in the rain."

Dan Cairns, the Guardian: "Mixed feelings are very much par for the course listening to Fearless, a record that does something bland and uninventive but does it incredibly well... You applaud her skill, while feeling slightly unsettled by the thought of a teenager pontificating away like Yoda."

Jonathan Keefe, Slant Magazine: "Swift's ability to market both her products and herself as a brand doesn't recall the media blitzkriegs of past teen idols like Britney Spears or New Kids on the Block so much as Madonna at her peak." ·