Beloved by fans, Taylor Swift basks in the glow

It smelled like clean teen spirit as Taylor Swift launched her show on Thursday at the Wachovia Center with "You Belong With Me." Her dancers cavorted in cheerleader outfits and Taylor appeared in a dazzling drum majorette uniform.

That breezy opening salvo was the first of the concert's big production numbers, the other being the Victorian costume epic staged for "Love Story."

Gamboling and skipping across the stage, the coltish star delivered a performance rife with spectacle, one punctuated by her young fans' siren-volume screaming.

The audience? Suffice it to say that all but one of the men's rooms on the main concourse had been conscripted and rebranded for the girls.

Before Swift performed (country act Gloriana and American Idol's Kellie Pickler were the opening acts), the crowd was encouraged to text a designated number with their thoughts, which scrolled by on the two giant screens flanking the stage. There were tweety shout-outs like "bridgets first concert yay!!!!" and "im your bigges fan

Let's call the 20-year-old wood nymph from Wyomissing, Pa., a pop star and be done with it. She's more Disney than Nashville. The only number all night with a discernible country flavor was "Our Song" and it was the fiddle arrangement that provided the hickory.

Swift's girly-girl anthems have three primary themes: crushes, heartbreak, and hell-hath-no-fury.

This is a young lady who does not handle rejection well, as evidenced by her choreographed furniture-throwing tantrum during "Forever & Always."

A demanding romantic, Swift believes that revenge is a dish best served with a rousing chorus. She introduced her angry "Should've Said No" by saying, "This is a song about a guy who made a choice to cheat on me and probably shouldn't have because I write songs."

The musical highlight was a majestic "You're Not Sorry," which found Swift at the piano tossing and whipping her Botticelli locks more than Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant ever did.

There was a whole lot of hugging going on as Swift executed two long crowd walks, to the far end of the floor on "Hey Stephen" and back to the stage on "Tim McGraw." Her perambulations, as you might expect, ignited considerable frenzy in the arena.

Supported by a slick and subtle seven-piece ensemble, Swift was in fine vocal form. Part of her precocious genius is that she writes songs that remain comfortably in her mid-range. Not that it would have mattered at the Wachovia, where every lyric was echoed by 20,000 avid backup singers.

In recent years, the ovations for teen idols have grown so loud and sustained that artists like Swift (and Justin Bieber, and the Jonas Brothers) have learned to factor them into their acts. At one point before singing "Today Was a Fairytale," Swift stood perfectly still for almost three minutes, basking in the keening adulation like a cat luxuriating by a warm stove.

The young audience at the Wachovia came not to listen but to worship, and in Taylor Swift, it had a most graceful and obliging demigoddess.

Find more exclusive photos from the concert: http://go.philly.com/taylorswiftpics EndText