I think I’m a nice girl,” says singer Katie Melua, contemplating her image as a sort of national sweetheart. She doesn’t sound too sure. At just 23, Melua is currently the best-selling British female recording artiste in the world. Combined sales of her debut album, 2003’s Call Off The Search and its follow-up, 2005’s Piece By Piece, have now topped 7.5 million. But, as she prepares to release her third album, Pictures, Melua cannot disguise a certain ambivalence about where her musical career has taken her.

For some, Melua is not so much a national treasure as a national embarrassment. Her music, let’s be clear, is far from cutting edge. Solidly middle-of-the-road, classically constructed, Melua’s songs are delivered in a gentle pop-jazz format overseen by 58-year-old composer Mike Batt, formerly of the Wombles.

Melua was born in Georgia in the former USSR but raised in the UK from the age of eight. She went to the Brit school of Performing Arts in Croydon, where Batt first spotted her. The musical impresario was looking for someone in the style of the late Eva Cassidy to perform his songs, and was won over by the then 18-year-old Melua’s own tribute to Cassidy, Faraway Voice. Her meeting with Batt changed her life.

Melua was the right girl in the right place at the right time, a home-grown answer to the similar and even more successful Norah Jones. It’s doubtful she would have flourished without Batt. She is often lumped together with James Blunt, another artiste whose success baffles critics. Adventurous young guns from the Arctic Monkeys to the Klaxons may grab the headlines and the awards, but there clearly remains a vast audience for the time-honoured virtues of melody, lyricism and performance.

Yet does Melua really belong to the boom? There has almost been a sense of deception involved in presenting her as a singer-songwriter at all: she only contributed two original songs to her debut.

The third album from the pair may be the one where the apprentice surpasses her mentor. While the easy-listening feel is still there, it is not hard to tell Melua and Batt’s songs apart. Melua’s songs are emotionally darker, more poetic and sincere. At which point, she drops a bombshell. “Me and Mike have decided this is the last album we are going to make as a creative team. It feels like the end of a chapter, our final little blast.” Always careful in her choice of words, Melua insists no criticism of her mentor is intended.

What the change in Melua’s musical identity will be is anyone’s guess, including hers. “I want to start afresh. As much as I hate the ‘nice girl next door’ perception, I equally hate the cliche of being the kind of frustrated young person who wants to change their image and throw their hair down and say ‘screw you!’ to their past. That’s part of the reason I have stuck with Mike. I’m proud of what I do, it has moved a lot of people, and I have been given a lot of creative control. There’s no rush. Where I am now gives me a platform to go to the next place.”

The Daily Telegraph