Katie Melua is not jazz, and she's definitely not the next Norah Jones, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea
Jazz? We don't think so. Now that anything associated with that word has more cachet than any canny marketing executive can dream of, along comes 19-year-old Katie Melua to dispel the notion that anyone who sounds remotely like Norah Jones can sell a bucket load of CDs and provide a never-ending selection of soundtrack smoothies to Starbucks clientele.
Melua has little time for the Norah Jones comparisons, anyway. "It's a bit difficult to live up to," she says on a frosty Dublin morning several days ago. It's flattering, she concedes, "but we're so different. The industry has a tendency to place people in boxes, but we all know it's just a way of referencing tastes. Ultimately she's Norah Jones and I'm Katie Melua". Melua is all ringlets and curls, and is - literally - made up for the day.
She's extra petite, has a face that Helen of Troy would be envious of and is the type of instantly famous person one might think would be a nightmare to talk to.
She was born in Georgia, in the former USSR, in 1984; her family lived in Moscow for a few years, subsequently residing in the seaside town of Batumi until Melua was nine, when her father's work as a heart surgeon eventually took the family to Belfast. She remained in the North until she was 13, which is when her father's work contract ran out - "he applied for a job in England and when he got that we left". Her memories of Belfast are fond if a tad too much raked-over for her liking. She played there last Sunday.
"It was great going back because it has always felt like I'm returning to my second home. I love Belfast so much, and I missed it so much when I left. All my relatives are back in Georgia in Eastern Europe, but I have so many friends in Belfast, people I met in schools, all my mum's friends." South-East London, 1997, was the next location for the Melua family and it's from this time onwards that her very slow rise to fame commenced.
She won the television talent contest, Stars Up Their Nose - singing Mariah Carey's Without You - which garnered a place in the BRIT School for Performing Arts. Amidst all the swapping of CDs and general getting to know the music business, the BRIT School organised for a few of its singers to back Westlife on the Smash Hit Awards 2000 tour.
"I was backing miming!," she reveals with a swivel of her eyebrows, allowing her aversion to manufactured pop to break through. "I was 16 and it was great fun. Their music? I haven't got their albums, so I can't really comment."
It was from hearing one singer in particular, however, that drove Melua to new heights of aspiration. "My main influences came about when I went to music school. I grew up a bit then, and heard and discovered real music and musicians. A lot of it was word of mouth, which is the best way to find out about music, I think. People such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Ella Fitzgerald and Bob Dylan were great, but perhaps the biggest influence of all was Eva Cassidy. Someone like her gets you right in the heart and it's amazing. That's the beauty of music, isn't it - whatever form it takes, you will always find something universal about it, that jumps over the language barrier, something that can capture people's hearts."
Certainly, Melua has captured the hearts of the UK. In the past six months, her début album, Call Off The Search, has climbed to the top of the charts on the back of word of mouth and radio/television support from the likes of Terry Wogan and Michael Parkinson. She signed a five-album record deal with the Dramatico record label (owned by her producer/mentor/former Womble Mike Batt, who also wrote six of 12 tracks on Call Off The Search; Melua wrote two, while the remainder are divided between the likes of Randy Newman and John Mayall). She differs from the Pop Idol wannabes in areas of taste, class and work ethic. She comes across as a person with a genuine sense of what she wants and where she wants to go.
But how much of Call Off The Search is actually Melua? Both the title track and the hit single, The Closest Thing to Crazy, are Batt compositions. "All of it," she says slightly proprietorially, her ringlets bobbing in mild annoyance. "It's an interesting project for me because I regard it as my singing album; yes, there are a couple of songs I've written but essentially it's a vehicle for my voice. People who sing and not write songs these days are viewed in a dismissive way - anyone can sing, seems to be the criticism, but I think that's an unfair judgment.
"Singing my own songs comes quite naturally to me, because I don't have to try to make the song my own - it is already. When you sing a cover, it's much harder work, and it takes a lot of skill to make it your own. I don't know if I've succeeded, but I liked the challenge of it."
She copes with her new-found success by partly denying it exists. "I haven't really changed to be honest; I don't get recognised in the street too much, which is great and I hope it stays like that. I concentrate on the music and the thing at hand. Someone should write a book about the psychological state people go through from being unknown to so-called famous. Not about the speed of it but the actual phenomenon. To be honest, I think I've managed to stay pretty okay about everything, but you do wonder sometimes about the people that aren't okay with it. Is it voluntary madness or is it something that happens without you knowing?"
If it's the latter, Melua ponders, then it's quite scary. She sometimes gets scared, she admits, but only insofar as watching carefully the things she says in interviews (hence her diplomatic silence about Westlife).
"You're almost being much nicer than if you weren't successful. It's not really about putting on anything close to airs and graces. It's more about being appreciative of what's happened to you and being thankful for it, which I totally am."
She's a grounded person, too. The way she looks at life is this: what she's doing doesn't matter at all. It is, she remarks, a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things. "I mean, what are we all doing here in a posh hotel getting my hair and make-up done at 11 in the morning? It doesn't make any sense, does it?"
But she also realises there are people who have listened to her record and come to her gigs who are effected by what they hear. "That's the most important aspect of what I do and that's why I love what I'm doing. The money doesn't matter, but the magic does."
Jazz? Once again, we don't think so.
"You can't really care about things like that. I'm not a jazz artist and neither is someone like Norah Jones. It's just about music, melodies and lyrics in simple form. I find it hard to define exactly what style I am - it doesn't really matter, does it?" She says she's in it for the long haul, which is only to be expected - who'd ever want to be a one-hit wonder? While her songwriting skills have yet to be truly put to the test, longevity might arrive in the shape of well-chosen cover versions (which is, presumably, where the experience of industry veteran Batt enters the picture).
"I always wanted to sing songs," Melua says, "but I never imagined it being attached to fame. Fame is incidental."
• Call Off The Search is on Dramatico