Taylor Swift’s Celebrity Duets Are Gift to Fans

Taylor Swift dazzled her hometown of Nashville with two shows over the weekend, surprising the sold-out Bridgestone Arena both nights with special appearances by Ronnie Dunn, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Paramore and Andy Grammer. The 21-year-old songbird, who also shocked her Los Angeles crowd with performances by Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Jason Mraz and Hot Chelle Rae, says her live celebrity duets are special gifts to her adoring, well-deserving fans.

"Bringing up special guests is something that I really like doing for the fans, because I want them to get so much out of deciding to spend their night at my show," she tells Nashville's Tennessean newspaper. "I want them to leave going, 'Wow, we really made the [right] choice by spending our Saturday night there.' It means a lot to me that people make plans to go and see my show. It's such a big commitment to go and buy tickets and go through the hassle of waiting in traffic, finding parking, waiting in lines, waiting in more lines and buying t-shirts. The fact that thousands of people are willing to make that commitment, it really resonates with me. I want them to get as much out of the show as they possibly can, so if I have artists that I'm a fan of and they happen to be friends, or even if I don't know them, I'll reach out to them and ask if they're in town, and see if they want to come out and sing for my crowd. It's so much fun, both for my crowd and for me, to have people come out and surprise the audience."

Taylor acknowledges that having a few days in her own home in Music City is always nice, even if it rarely goes as planned. "I just recently came back to Nashville for two days, and I'd been out on the road for a month," explains the singer-songwriter. "Coming back, it's crazy, because I go straight into work mode, and both days, [I spent] the majority of my time in the studio, and then every split second that I wasn't in the studio, I was spending with my family and knocking on my brother's door and seeing how he's been.

"It's funny because when you haven't been there for a while, you get home, and you're wiped out," she continues. "I took a red-eye home and my door sensor was beeping every five minutes. I was stumbling around the house in mid-sleep trying to figure out what this beeping was. This always happens. When I came home from my three month tour in Asia and Europe, there was a light that wouldn't turn off, a chandelier that would not turn off above my bed. There's always something that hysterically keeps me from sleeping when I'm so excited to be home in my own bed."

The 'Sparks Fly' singer will wrap up her Speak Now World tour in March of 2012 in New Zealand, with a three-month break that begins at the end of November. In spite of her whirlwind tour schedule, which leaves little time to see her friends or family, she says she wouldn't have it any other way.

"Actually, I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm not on this tour anymore," Taylor admits. "I'm so in love with this tour that I just I love being on it. I love the schedule. I love the crowds. I love the feeling you get when you walk off stage, and it was a good show. Of course, I'll move on to the next thing after this tour's over, and that will probably be overdrive recording and obsessing over my next album. That whole process kind of works naturally in a two-year phase, when you're creating an album for two years, and you're finally ready to put it out, it's all you think about. Hopefully we'll get there, and there will be plenty to do at the end of this tour. There will be plenty of things to plan for, and then we continue in Australia in February, so I won't have to say goodbye to it completely."

Taylor will continue her Speak Now tour tomorrow night (September 20) in Bossier City, La., followed by shows in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Colorado. Keep track of her concert schedule here.