Like line-dancing and Cadillacs, Taylor Swift is popular in the US but relatively unheard of in the UK. The country starlet — think LeAnn Rimes meets the missing Dixie Chick — was the biggest-selling artist in the States last year, with record sales in excess of four million.

Indeed, her debut album is still in the US charts more than two years after its release, with its follow-up, Fearless, spending more time at No1 than any album this century.

Impressive stuff for a woman still shy of her 20th birthday — but has Swift got what it takes to make it over here?

If the reaction at the first of two sell-out shows at Shepherd’s Bush Empire is anything to go by, then you can bet your Stetson on it. Strutting on to a stage far smaller than she must be used to, Swift was met with a chorus of screams from an audience made up largely of teenage girls.

Flashing a blindingly white smile, the Nashville singer launched into the pop-rock of You Belong With Me backed by a seven-piece band. Like much of the Swift canon, the song inhabits a distinctly teenage world. “She wears short skirts/I wear T‑shirts/She’s the cheer captain/I’m in the bleachers,” she sang in a sweet, lilting voice.

However, Swift is capable of more than such vacuous observations. The winner of a national poetry prize as a child was genuinely moving on Teardrops On My Guitar, while early single Tim McGraw garnered the evening’s best reaction — even if the song’s grizzled crooner of a subject will not make many of the teenyboppers’ playlists.

If Swift loved us once, she loved us a thousand times, regularly pausing between songs to remark upon our “adorable accents” and “wonderful city”.

It was well-rehearsed stuff, but the intention was clear: Swift was here to impress. And impress she did, although there were a few too many forgettable moments in her 90-minute set to make for a truly special performance. For every melodic masterpiece, there was a bland ballad, and the middle of the set dragged a little as a result.

Thankfully, a thundering cover of Justin Timberlake’s What Goes Around…/…Comes Around jolted things into action. And when this was followed by a feisty encore of Picture to Burn, Swift ensured that the crowd were screaming as loudly when she left the stage as when she took it. Yeehaw!