Taylor Swift Reveals Role Models in Billboard Cover Story

Taylor Swift is a role model for millions of her teenage fans and young girls everywhere. The singer, who was named Billboard's Woman of the Year and appears on the cover of the trade paper's Women in Music issue, revealed a handful of the people she considers role models and that she looks up to. It's not all women either.

Swift, the youngest woman to ever be christened Billboard's Woman of the Year, named several country singers and one Tennessee-raised raised Hollywood A-lister as her biggest role models. She graciously said, "I have a lot of role models. Faith Hill is a big role model. Reese Witherspoon is a role model of mine - she's not in music, but I love everything she stands for. Shawn Colvin is a huge model for me. Her writing has been consistently great and thoughtful and wistful and beautiful."

Her non-female role model? None other than Kris Kristofferson. Swift continued, "And also-[he's] not a girl-but Kris Kristofferson has been a big role model for me."

From a business perspective, Swift counts fellow arena-filling country star Kenny Chesney as someone she looks up to. "He's gotten to a place where he's one of the only artists playing stadiums," Swift said about the mega successful star. "Seeing a live Kenny Chesney show, you know what you're going to get. You know it's going to be an all-day party. He loves to sing about things he's passionate about, and he's made a brand without seeming like it's a brand. I love that he's gotten to a place where he can play such huge stadiums, and even when he's supposedly taking downtime he's playing stadiums. He's always been a huge hero of mine."

There's a really simple criteria Swift has when it comes to admiring and respecting someone in the music business. She said, "When I look at people who I feel have really lived their lives and recorded their lives in music so beautifully, those are my role models. They've all taught me lessons just by example." Something tells us that there is a future country superstar out there who is paying attention to and absorbing every word that Swift says and will list Swift as her No. 1 role model down the road.

Congrats again on winning the Woman of the Year honors, Taylor!