Taylor Swift photo courtesy of Big Machine Records.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition of country music’s best-selling artists from two different eras. When Taylor Swift was born, Garth Brooks had hit No. 1 for the first time just days earlier with “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” When her first album came out in the fall of 2006, Garth was just days away from a bevy of certifications that would push his career album sales over 120 million.

Both artists sold a ton of concert tickets at the end of last week. With her single “Fifteen” in the Top 15, Taylor put 15 arena shows up for sale on Friday, and all of them sold out in minutes. Garth, who was already retired when she Swiftly became the genre’s new top seller, put his comeback tickets in Las Vegas on the market Saturday, and after overloading the Wynn Las Vegas website, his first 20 performances sold out as well.

Garth’s shows will be one-man ventures in a new theater that seats fewer than 2,000 people, but he set the stage for Taylor years ago. He consistently sold out arenas of 10,000-plus seats at a time when few acts did that, and he rather famously created artificial rain for a TV special years before Taylor made an onstage soaking a regular part of her act.

Garth won’t go on a full tour until his daughters are all 18 years old, which means it’s another five years before he competes head to head with Taylor on the road. In the meantime, she’s doing the kinds of things that became familiar during his era. She received 15 digital sales certifications on a single day earlier this month, with “Love Story” going gold, platinum, double-, triple- and quadruple-platinum all at the same time. The next day, she garnered six American Music Awards nominations. And like Garth did previously, she’s slated to be the host and musical guest next month (Nov. 7) on an episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

The kind of attention bestowed on Garth in the early 1990s is now being showered on Taylor, who’s got her own signature Taylor Guitar line, a collection of sun dresses and even a doll that’s modeled after her.

“That’s interesting,” Taylor told the United Kingdom’s Mail On Sunday, recognizing the head rush that accompanies global fame. “You grow up playing with dolls, and then suddenly you are one.”

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