The big interview: Katie Melua

All promotional activity was cancelled and rumours flew. For a while, it looked like she was about to follow the same depressing trajectory of countless others who become overnight stars in their teens and then struggled to cope with the fame. Certainly, the tracks on her fourth album are darker than her previous offerings, but the 26-year-old refutes any idea they should be read as evidence of a troubled mind.

“I’m a bit dubious about messages in songs. Songs are just songs. When you listen to a song, you form a relationship with it. You associate it with how you feel or how you felt in the past. That’s why songs mean different things to different people.

“I’ve been asked if the song What I Miss About You was about an ex-boyfriend. The lyrics were actually written by Andrea McKewan and I have no idea who she wrote them about. I didn’t ask, I would never ask because once I adapt a song, it’s mine. Once you hear it, it’s yours.

“Of course, when I write, I am influenced by my own relationships as well as the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen. But song writing is never that black and white. There are always thoughts and ideas in your subconscious that inspire you. I don’t sit down and decide in advance what the subject matter is going to be. Sometimes even I’m not sure exactly who or what some of my own songs are about.”

Today, Melua seems keen to draw a line under the events of last year. She’s thanked her fans for their messages of support and, having successfully completed a series of European gigs, she’s about to embark on the postponed 12-date UK tour which begins in Sheffield next weekend. Afterwards, it will be back to Europe for another month of concerts, but while it may be business as usual, the Melua audiences will see this time around is changed.

Working with the likes of Guy Chambers, best know for his collaboration with Robbie Williams, Melua also coaxed William Orbit, the man behind Madonna’s Ray of Light album, out of retirement to produce The House. The result is an eclectic mix, ranging from the Berlin cabaret-inspired A Moment of Madness to a cover of a bluegrass classic The One I Love is Gone.

“I can’t say I had a specific direction for the album, but I knew it would be experimental. I wanted to explore my imagination and see how far I could take my mind. I was influenced by the most futuristic and ancient music you could imagine. Inspiration is everywhere. It just depends on whether or not you allow it into your consciousness. Some of the songs I suppose are a bit creepy, but I’ve always been a huge fan of horror films. Others are love songs, but with a twist. I was determined to tread my own path.

“When we started recording, I was worried the songs might sound too varied, but William put my mind at rest. He brought my songs into line and showed me that they naturally belonged to the same body of work. I understood that I was the common thread.”

For Melua the album is a departure. Her early career, which began when she was just 18, was spent working with Mike Batt, still known to many for getting the Wombles into the charts and writing Bright Eyes. The pair met while Melua was a pupil at the Brit School in South London and Batt soon became her mentor.

“I had just written the song Faraway Voice and Mike came to the school literally two weeks later, looking for a singer in the style of Eva Cassidy. I didn’t think I was anywhere near as good as Eva, but I decided to play Mike my song and see what he said. He later told me that on his audition notes, he wrote: ‘Small girl. Good voice. Sang her own song’.”

It might not have been exactly a ringing endorsement, but her performance was enough to convince Batt to abandon his original plan for an orchestral project and take Melua under his wing for her debut Call of the Search, which sold 1.8 million copies in its first five months of release.

“Mike helped me explore myself mainly as a singer. On Piece By Piece and Pictures, my second and third albums, he encouraged me to be more involved in the songwriting. Over five years, Mike wrote so many great songs for me to sing and we co-wrote too. For me, satisfaction doesn’t always come from having written a song. It’s a challenge singing someone else’s songs.”

After those first three albums, Melua decided to go it alone. It was an amicable parting and Batt is still very much involved in the singer’s career. He acted as executive producer on The House and it was he who suggested she team up with Orbit.

“Mike taught me well. I was initially concerned at not having the same involvement from him, but he was happy to guide me and be gently involved. He did all the string arrangements and co-wrote one of the tracks, God on Drums, Devil on the Bass. He’s still my manager and head of my record label. It’s a family-type collaboration. Without him, my career wouldn’t be what it is. I’d probably still be a musician, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed success on anything like this scale.”

Family is important to Melua. Born in Georgia, in the aftermath of the country’s civil war the family moved to Belfast when Melua was eight-years-old and a few years later to London. Initially she had ideas of becoming an historian or politician, but soon found she had inherited her parents’ love of music.

“I don’t know if I ever had a realisation I could sing; it was more a realisation of how music made me feel. It first hit me when I heard my mum play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on piano. I remember this bubbly emotion rising in my stomach. Music is part of everyone’s life in my homeland of Georgia – more than anywhere else I’ve been in the world. Music has simply always been all around me.”

Emerging onto the scene at a time when their was a dearth of female singer/songwriters, Melua soon began to reap the rewards. In the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List she was the seventh-richest musician under 30 with an estimated £18m in the bank. More recently, it has been reported that her wealth has been severely dinted by the global downturn, but money, she insists, has never been much of a motivator.

“Becoming famous when I was so young was a bit of a shock to the system. But I got used to it. I have never chased fame for the sake of it and I also realise it could flicker out at any time. When I go home, I don’t take my work with me. What I mean is, I don’t take any part of my fame with me. The only thing I take home is my music. I don’t like needless extravagance.

“In Georgia, I lived on the fourth floor of a block of flats. We didn’t always have water because the pump kept breaking. As a kid I never had a bath. There just wasn’t enough water. Fortunately I could fit quite nicely into a bucket. When the country became unstable we had to queue for bread and it gave me a perspective of what’s important which I hope would never leave me.

“You won’t find me at celebrity parties. I don’t feel comfortable at them. They may make me feel like I did at school – shy and a bit of a dork.”

For a self-confessed dork, she’s not done badly and along the way has realised many childhood dreams, from playing with her musical heroes Queen at a Nelson Mandela concert to dueting with Eva Cassidy, nine years after her death, courtesy of some digital trickery.

“The first album I ever bought was a pirate cassette of Queen’s Greatest Hits from a market stall in Tblisi in Georgia. I played it incessantly because the songs were so catchy, so playing with Queen was the most incredible life experience ever. When I look back now, it seems like a surreal dream. I grew up with my uncles playing Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath and a whole lot of heavy metal, but out of all of them Queen resonated the most.

“Of course, I adore Eva Cassidy. To hear my voice alongside hers was an honour. What I loved was her amazingly selfless way of singing. She did what was right for the song, not to show off what she could do with her voice.”

Away from the recording studio, Melua admits she is something of an adrenaline junkie. An accomplished scuba diver, she harbours ambitions to go beneath the waters of the Arctic Circle and four years ago set a Guinness World Record for playing the deepest-ever underwater concert, 300m below sea level at the bottom of a gas rig in the North Sea.

“If there’s an opportunity to do something wild, I’m usually the first there. Unfortunately I was recently foiled in one of my big ambitions to fly with the Red Arrows. I had done a concert for their benevolent fund and they invited me to have a flight in the cockpit. I was looking forward to it for weeks, only to be told I don’t weigh enough to meet their ejector seat regulations. I’m seriously considering what Renee Zellweger did for Bridget Jones and putting on a couple of stone just so I can take up their invitation. My thrill addiction stems from my childhood in Georgia. There, life was one big adventure. I spent my spare time climbing trees, running around the woods and surfing on tree barks in the sea.”

Melua’s music may not involve so many risks, but it provides exactly the same thrill factor.

“I was driving in my car earlier this year when my new single came on the radio. I felt this big bubble of excitement well up in my stomach. When I got to the traffic lights I just wanted to wind down my window and shout, “Hey, listen that’s me singing”. It’s all about the butterflies – the same ones I got in my stomach when I was six and I heard my mum sing. As long as I keep getting butterflies, I’ll be making music.”

* Katie Melua, Sheffield City Hall, April 22. 0114 278 9789, www.sheffieldcityhall.co.uk