Singer Taylor Swift touches base with devoted fans

They come from Bakersfield, San Diego, Long Beach and elsewhere across the southland, about three dozen young women plus a handful of young men who have caught the eye of the gathering's host with posts about her on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and other social media sites.

Enticed by vague invitations to be part of "an amazing opportunity", they are shuttled in luxury vans through the winding roads above Beverly Hills on a recent Saturday afternoon to a two-storey mansion where they nosh on pizza and other snacks before being invited into the warmly appointed living room.

Just moments after they've settled into couches, chairs and nine overstuffed pillows scattered across a large Persian rug, arguably the biggest pop star on the planet pops through a doorway, a fluffy white kitten clutched to her chest. "Hey, guys," Taylor Swift says to screams of delight.

A few minutes later, Swift is explaining how her guests have been selected based on comments they've posted on social media sites. "You guys have been individually hand-picked - by mostly me," she says. "I'm obsessed with Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr. Why I wanted to have you here at this secret session is to play the entire new album for you."

This is just the first of several of Swift's "secret sessions" during which she personally previewed her fifth studio album, 1989, for groups of fans ahead of the album's release late last month (others were held at her homes in Nashville, New York and Rhode Island).

That's a major departure from the veil of secrecy surrounding her two previous blockbuster albums, Speak Now in 2010 and Red in 2012, both of which defied the music industry's downward trajectory of recent years by selling more than a million copies each in their first week of release.