The general consensus is that Taylor Swift is a sellout. She's a basically a country singer who re branded herself as a pop star so more people would buy her music.
I highly doubt that she is smart enough to re brand herself into anything. Most likely this was a strategic move by the record company and/or her producers in an effort to hit a wider audience (pop music outsells just about all other major genres combined). Sales-wise, her numbers have been fairly consistent through her first 5 albums with only the last one being "disappointing", if you want to consider 2.5M sales in the US and 4.5M sales worldwide as "disappointing".
I'm not defending her -OR- condemning her, I'm just saying I don't think she's bright enough to to make that kind of strategic move on her own. Her first couple of albums weren't bad (not really my thing) because even then, it was still pop-country / country-pop, as most country is that comes out of Nashville in the past 15 years. Prettyboys and pretty girls that don't quite have what it takes to be a pop star (or so deemed by the shitty recording industry) so they add some twang and re-brand them as country to appeal to a different audience. Swift just did that in reverse order.