Taylor Swift had ‘eye of the tiger’ at 17

American singer Kenny Chesney has weighed in on Taylor Swift’s massive success.

The 57-year-old shares a longstanding professional relationship with the pop star who almost toured with him.

While the Blank Space singer was still rising in the 2000’s, she was supposed to perform as Chesney’s opening act in his Flip-Flop Summer Tour.

Kenny wrote about it in his upcoming memoir Heart Life Music, explaining why she was dropped last moment.

Taylor was expected to join him as his opener but after one of the beer companies sponsored the tour, she was dropped for being underage at the time as she was still 17.

However, Kenny still went on to cut her a cheque.

The singer praised Taylor’s passion in conversation with People saying “With Taylor, I mean, she had the eye of the tiger even as a teenager. And I recognized that early on.”

“You can't look into a crystal ball predict and see what happened to her, but I could tell that she was really talented and really wanted it.”, he added.

The Summertime singer also commented on Taylor’s songwriting skills saying “she was a really good songwriter”.