Can I have that beautiful guitar please?

Grammy winning singer Taylor Swift performs for the Today Show in New York. She is out promoting her latest album ‘Speak Now‘.

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Taylor Swift engages the crowd as she heads of to promote her new album ‘Speak Now’.

Bauer Griffin

Taylor Swift unveiled her wax figure yesterday at Madame Tussauds in New York.

The singer, who was dressed in an identical outfit to her wax-self, gave the replica figure two thumbs up before telling crowds: “I think that the face looks a lot like me and this is so crazy. This is wonderful. I’m really thankful.”

Swift’s statue comes complete with a custom-made guitar, decorated with 2,000 Swarovski crystals.

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Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Swift spent the weekend together in NYC, and the rumor mill is going full force. Are they a couple? Just friends? The two visited an apple farm, had lunch in Brooklyn and then visited the Saturday Night Live set.

Will the two take it to the next level – or keep it simple?

Taylor is very serious about her career,” the source tells PEOPLE. “For her, it’s all about the career right now. She’s not really interested in getting heavily involved with anyone.”

Even after this weekend’s social events – which included a visit to Saturday Night Live set and a friendly brunch in Brooklyn – the two are just hanging out for now, a Gyllenhaal source agrees.

“They’re cute together,” says a source close to Gyllenhaal, 29. “But I don’t think there’s anything to it. Everyone’s talking about it. They hung out. But that’s it. I don’t think they’re a couple.”

Whether romance blossoms between the two remains to be seen, although the Swift source predicts she’ll look outside the entertainment business for long-term love.

“If she does have a serious relationship, it’s probably going to be with someone who’s not in the industry or someone who’s not a household name,” the source says. “With Jake, she probably figures, why not be seen together and keep everyone guessing.”

Two more pictures after the jump! (more…)

Are Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal dating? According to multiple sources, the couple were spotted strolling through Brooklyn hand-in-hand on Sunday.

According to Life & Style:

Taylor Swift definitely has a taste for older men! The 20-year-old country songbird has a new man in her life: 29-year-old actor Jake Gyllenhaal, Life & Style’s Scene Queens can report exclusively. The two were spotted looking cozy in Brooklyn, N.Y., yesterday. “Taylor and Jake were walking around Park Slope holding hands,” an eyewitness tells the Scene Queens. “They looked like a couple!”

Taylor’s date with Jake comes on the heels of recent reports that the singer had been romantically entangled with 33-year-old rocker John Mayer. Jake’s most recent relationship was with actress Reese Witherspoon; the two split 10 months ago.

This seems very strange to me. I kind of hope it’s not true.

Taylor Swift stunned everyone this week when she graced the cover of PEOPLE and told all about her relationships with Joe Jonas and Taylor Lautner. Now, what has everyone on the edge of their seats is how notorious kiss-and-teller John Mayer is going to respond to what Taylor is probably saying about him in her new song, ‘Dear John.’

“Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with,” Taylor asks in the song (talking about the 33-year-old John?). “Maybe it’s you and your sick need to give love and take it away.”

There have long been rumors that the two were romantically involved in 2009 while collaborating on ‘Half of My Heart,’ a track from his last album.

Everyone knows John “loves publicity and lives for this” type of situation, a giddy friend of John’s tells me. “She can bet that right now he is sitting in his apartment thinking of some witty way to respond. Writing a response to ‘Dear John’ called ‘Dear Taylor’ would be too obvious, so expect something much bigger than that.”

And although John’s friend has no idea exactly what the crooner will do, his history with the ladies should give Taylor reason to worry. Who can forget the explicit details he gave about Jessica Simpson in a Playboy interview in February? Or how he held a presser to tell the world about his ugly breakup with America’s sweetheart Jennifer Aniston?

“Sure Taylor has a right to say whatever she wants but she needs to know she is playing with fire,” an insider tells me. Taylor writes, “Don’t you think nineteen’s too young to be played by your dark, twisted games when I loved you so?”

Source

Taylor Swift has been in the news quite a bit lately, with the release of her new album, and her reported song to John Mayer. She opens up to Parade Magazine about marriage, songwriting and the inspiration behind her new album.

On marriage…

“I’ve seen marriages be really great, and I’ve seen them be not so great. I’ve seen that people have to really work through love and fight for it, and I’ve been in relationships where you have to fight for it, and is it worth it? I don’t think that love can possibly be easy all the time, in fact most of the time it’s going to be hard. I think it’s important to try to find someone who’s going to tell you ‘This is worth it’ when you’re scared, and tell you ‘I’m never leaving you’ when you’re doubting it. I think that’s the most important thing.”

On her new album, Speak Now…

“One of the things that make this album different is that a lot of the time on my albums before this, I was dreaming about what relationships could happen if this were to work out or I was mourning the loss of the relationship that I could have had if this guy had been around and realized what he should have realized. On this one, if I’m missing someone, I’m missing an actual person that I was in a relationship with, and if I’m apologizing to someone it’s about someone I was actually in a relationship with. In the last two years I’ve experienced so much in the spectrum of love and how to handle life when it throws itself at you really fast. Sometimes you don’t say the right thing and sometimes you don’t know what to say so you don’t say anything.”

On songwriting and her very personal lyrics.

“I think the thing that makes me so obsessed with lyrics is that you can say exactly what you mean, or you can use a metaphor and make it a little bit of a code to crack. I like to make songs that are really detailed, really honest but make you wonder a little bit who they’re about. Sometimes I’ll mention names, sometimes I’ll mention dates and times and details and it’s all pretty clear. But I don’t need to make it so obvious that other people can’t apply their lives to it.

“I feel things really intensely, and whether that feeling is hurt or missing someone or happiness or saying I’m sorry to someone or being completely angry at someone and wanting to lash out at them, I write that into a song. I think if you were to open anyone’s diary from the ages of 16 to 20, you would find a lot in there that people don’t put forth. I just happen to publish my diary for millions of people to read.”

On criticism of her voice.

“Some days I’m fine and I can just brush it off and go about my day, but some days it absolutely levels me. All I can do is continue to try to work hard every single day and feel everything. I think it’s important to feel things because I then write songs about that. The whole idea of being criticized and the fact that that entered my life made for a song that I’m very proud of on the record, called “Mean.’”