Here are some nice photos of Taylor Swift, all for the July issue of Marie Claire. I feel like Taylor was just on the cover Marie Claire. Let me check… nope, I was thinking about her recent Elle and Allure covers. To be fair, she’s styled the same way most of the time, although one magazine did give her either a wig, or they straightened her hair, and all of a sudden she looked like the most sophisticated girl. The curly hair makes her look young, and it makes her look “country”. So I guess it’s staying.

As far as the interview goes, I’m only skimming it for highlights – the full piece is here. There’s a lot about Reba McEntire and how much she and Taylor have some kind of lovefest going on. Let’s see… Taylor talks about how busy she is, and there’s a little mention of John Mayer, who I still think Taylor is dating/screwing. With thoughts like that, it’s easy to see why I have a hard time liking her right now. But she can come back! Here are some more of the highlights:

MC: Thanks to Twitter we know that you may be doing something with John Mayer and T-Pain. Could you talk about working with those artists, the freedom, and what’s that like for you creatively?
TS: I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons. For me, great music doesn’t just have to fall into one category or one genre and I love appreciating all kinds of music. Country music is obviously my favorite and that just goes without saying. But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant. Getting to work with people like that has been really, really fun for me. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do and the fact that country radio has been so wonderful to me and has remained so true to me despite the fact that I’ve gotten to go and do all these things that I’ve dreamed about doing. It’s just been a really, really cool thing.

Thousands of girls are running around in sundresses and cowboy boots. Is this a fashion phenomenon for you?
Yes! That’s awesome. I wasn’t trying to start anything. I wasn’t trying to make people dress a certain way, but seeing girls coming to my shows wearing sundresses and cowboy boots and curling their hair is one of my favorite experiences ever because I remember when I was weird for dressing the way that I dressed and I was weird for having curly hair. It’s really fun to see that I’m not that weird anymore.

What do you do to keep from burning out?
As far as burning out, I get tired a lot, but I never get tired of it. I remember when I was a little kid and I used to sit there and think about how lucky I would be one day where people cared about the words that I wrote or how lucky I would be if someday I was just walking through the mall and saw some little girl walking by with my face on her t-shirt.

When you spend so much time daydreaming about things like that, when that actually happens you don’t ever complain about it. When I go to a restaurant, yeah I know that a line is probably going to form in front of the table, but didn’t I always wish for that? Yeah, I did. So it’s like, I never want to be the girl who wanted something so bad her whole life and then gets it and complains about it. I’m not going to be that girl.

[From Marie Claire]

She sounds like a nice girl. That’s always what I’ve thought about her – maybe she’s not the greatest country-pop crossover talent ever, and maybe her success came too fast, too soon, but she’s always remained rather winningly sweet to me. I can only imagine how naïve she is about men, though. To go from Taylor Lautner (who probably wouldn’t touch her without a contract in place) to John Mayer (who was probably about to wank on himself at the thought of doing douchey sh-t to Taylor), this girl needs some mature girlfriends in her life to show her the ropes.

Marie Claire photos courtesy of MC online.