Taylor Swift performs during the CMT Music Awards in Nashville, Tenn., Tuesday, June 16, 2009. There's a lot that Swift appreciates about Shania Twain, whom she cites as her main influence - Twain's albums, her live show and all that she's done for country music. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Mark Humphrey

TORONTO - There's a lot that Taylor Swift appreciates about Shania Twain, the woman she cites as her main influence - her albums, her live show and all that she's done for country music.

But it was Twain's graceful departure from the spotlight that may have had the most indelible impact on Swift.

"I loved watching her when she was touring, and when she put out 'Come on Over,' but when I really gained respect was seeing her go away and seeing how she never left people's minds," Swift said in a conference call on Thursday.

"Shania's absolutely my favourite because she's so memorable. I'm always just gonna be so, so in love with what she's done for country music. You know, as far as any other artist, when you leave a genre and leave the music industry for that long, people would forget you - but not Shania. No one ever forgot her."

Though the Timmins, Ont., native who hasn't put out an album since 2002's "Up!," Twain still casts an inimitable shadow over country music, says Swift.

"Every single award show it was, 'Where's Shania? When's she gonna come back? When's she gonna put out something new?"' said Swift, who speaks with a warm, down-home demeanour. "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."

Meanwhile, the 19-year-old Swift has done an admirable job of similarly entrenching herself as a marquee young star in country music.

The Pennsylvania native was the first artist to have two different albums in the Top 10 year-end album chart in Nielsen SoundScan history - her 2006 self-titled debut and last year's "Fearless" - and won awards for video of the year and female video of the year at the CMT Awards earlier this month.

In fact, Forbes Magazine ranked Swift - she of the long blond locks and the bright, girl-next-door grin - as the 69th most powerful celebrity in 2009.

She's also in the midst of her first headlining tour, which will visit Calgary, Edmonton, Craven, Sask., and Winnipeg next month.

Her performance for the "Fearless" tour consists of three acts - the first, she says, aims to warm up the crowd, the second is acoustic and the third is "when it really gets crazy" - and eight costume changes.

Swift says she was working with a fairy-tale motif when working on the concept for the tour, and hopes the live performance and dramatizations contained therein give audiences a bit of insight into her songs.

"I wanted to make it more theatrical than anything I'd seen in the country shows that I'd opened up for," she said. "Theatre is an element to music that I love. I grew up doing children's theatre and just have always had this deep love for the whole element of seeing something play out before your eyes as well as hearing it through music."

"So 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."

For example?

"There's one song that is just really emotional and personal and it comes from just this place of anger and hurt, and so in the song, I freak out and throw this chair off a giant balcony of the stage," she said. "Things like that just showcase what I was feeling when I wrote the song."