Katie Melua

After an upbringing in politically unstable Georgia, Melua initially planned to become either a historian or a politician.[35][36] This changed in 2000, at the age of 15, when Melua took part in a talent competition on British television channel ITV called "Stars Up Their Noses" (a spoof of Stars in Their Eyes) as part of the children's programme Mad for It.[37] Melua won the contest by singing Badfinger's "Without You". The prize was £350 worth of MFI vouchers, with which she bought a chair for her father.[38] Had she lost the contest, she would have been gunged.[39]

After completing her GCSEs, Melua attended the BRIT School for the Performing Arts in the London Borough of Croydon, undertaking a BTEC with an A-level in music. When studying at the school, Melua began to write songs and met her future manager and producer, Mike Batt.[24]

While performing at BRIT School showcase, Melua caught the eye of songwriter and producer Mike Batt. Batt was originally looking for an acid-rock band, bass player[40] and a singer capable of singing "jazz and blues in an interesting way".[41] After hearing Melua sing "Faraway Voice" (a song she wrote about the death of her idol Eva Cassidy) Batt signed the 18-year-old Melua to his small Dramatico recording and management company and took her into the studio, producing her first three albums during the subsequent years, plus her fifth and sixth albums.[42]

For her fourth album, The House (2010), Melua worked with producer William Orbit. She said about the experience: "The whole thing has been really exciting. It was the same feeling I had the first time I went skydiving. I was really quite nervous, but I knew all I had to do was let myself go and it was going to feel amazing. I wasn't trying to get away from anything. It was more about going towards something. I wanted the music to be inspired by the future, something unknown that's never been heard before, but at the same time hold on to the values of the music of the past, to try and tap into something that's so ancient and old that it's kind of forgotten. I thought that, if we went far enough in both directions, we could end up in the same place".[43]

Melua's debut album, Call Off the Search, was released on 3 November 2003 and featured two songs written by Melua: "Belfast (Penguins and Cats)", a song about Melua's experience of her time in the troubled capital of Northern Ireland, and "Faraway Voice", a song about the death of Eva Cassidy. Melua also covered songs by Delores J. Silver ("Learnin' the Blues"), John Mayall ("Crawling up a Hill"), Randy Newman ("I Think It's Going to Rain Today") and James Shelton ("Lilac Wine", originally a UK hit for singer Elkie Brooks). The other six songs on the album were by Mike Batt.[44]

It was initially difficult for Melua and Batt to obtain airplay for the album's lead single, the Mike Batt song "The Closest Thing to Crazy". This changed when BBC Radio 2 producer Paul Walters heard the single and played it on the popular Sir Terry Wogan breakfast show.[45] Wogan played "The Closest Thing to Crazy" frequently in the summer of 2003. Wogan's support raised Melua's profile and when Call Off the Search was released in November 2003 supported by a TV campaign financed by Batt, it entered the top 40 UK albums chart. The single achieved the number 10 spot in the UK chart. After an appearance on the Royal Variety Show the album was further boosted and Batt continued a relentless marketing campaign which saw the album hit the number one spot in January 2004. Call Off the Search reached the top five in Ireland, top 20 in Norway and top 30 in a composite European chart. In the UK the album sold 1.9 million copies, making it six times platinum, and spent six weeks at the top of the UK charts. It sold 3.6 million copies worldwide. Subsequent singles from the album did not repeat the success of the first – the second single and album title track "Call Off the Search" reached number 19, and the third single "Crawling up a Hill" got to number 41.[46] The album achieved 6× platinum status in UK, 3× platinum in Norway, 2× platinum in Germany, Holland, Denmark and Ireland, Platinum in South Africa, Australia and Switzerland and gold (500,000 units sold) in New Zealand and Hong Kong.

Melua's second album, Piece by Piece, was released on 26 September 2005. Its lead single was the Mike Batt song, "Nine Million Bicycles", which was released a week before the album on 19 September and was number three in the UK singles chart. The album contains four more songs written by Melua herself, four more by Batt (including "Nine Million Bicycles"), one Batt/Melua collaboration and three more songs described as new versions of "great songs". The band line-up was the same as on the first album. The album debuted at the number one spot on the UK Albums Chart in the week of 3 October 2005.[47] This album broke Melua across Europe where it sold 1 million copies in Germany alone and achieved the number one position in Billboard's "European" albums chart. It was 4× platinum in UK and Ireland, 3× platinum in Norway, Denmark, Holland and Germany, 2× platinum in Poland and Switzerland and at least platinum or gold in France, Iceland, South Africa, Austria, Belgium, New Zealand and Sweden. Worldwide sales to date are in excess of 3.5 million.

On 30 September 2005, Melua came under criticism in The Guardian from writer and scientist Simon Singh for the lyrics (written by Mike Batt) of the track "Nine Million Bicycles". Batt's disputed lyrics were:

We are 12 billion light-years from the edge. That's a guess – no-one can ever say it's true, but I know that I will always be with you.[48]

They were interpreted by Singh as an assault on the accuracy of the work of cosmologists[49] which sparked a series of letters from other Guardian readers, agreeing or disagreeing.[50] On 15 October, Melua and Singh appeared on the BBC's Today programme, and Melua light-heartedly performed the song during the interview, including Singh's tongue-in-cheek amendments to the lyrics:

We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe / That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars / And with the available information / I predict that I will always be with you.[48]

Both sides amicably agreed that the new lyrics were less likely to achieve commercial success, amidst a discussion about scientific accuracy versus artistic licence. Melua said that she "should have known better" because she used to be a member of the astronomy club at school.[51]

A double A-side of the Melua-penned "I Cried for You" and a cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" (1988), which also appeared on the soundtrack to the film Just Like Heaven,[52] was released in the UK on 5 December and peaked at number 35. "I Cried for You" was inspired by a meeting with the writer of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.[53]

A third single, "Spider's Web" was released on 17 April 2006 and peaked at number 52 in the UK. Melua embarked on a concert tour in support of Piece by Piece, the UK leg of which started in Aberdeen, Scotland on 20 January 2006.[54] Towards the end of 2006, Melua released the single, "It's Only Pain", which was written by Mike Batt.[55] This was followed by the release of "Shy Boy", also written by Batt.[56]

Melua at Cambridge Corn Exchange, part of her 2006 UK concert tour

Melua's third album, Pictures, was released in the UK on 1 October 2007[57] and was announced to be, at least temporarily, the last of her albums in collaboration with Mike Batt as lead writer and producer.[11] It also features Melua's friend Molly McQueen, the former frontwoman of The Faders, as co-writer of "Perfect Circle". Melua also collaborated with Andrea McEwan on the album, who wrote the lyrics for "What I Miss About You" and "Dirty Dice".[58] The album also featured a cover of "In My Secret Life" by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson. Melua said of the cover, "[It] completely got to me, about how we all have great ideals but in reality we end up conforming, following everyone else."[11]

Melua released four singles from the album: "If You Were a Sailboat", "Mary Pickford", "If the Lights Go Out", and "Ghost Town".[59] "Mary Pickford", written by Mike Batt, was about the silent film star of the same name and the formation of United Artists along with Charlie Chaplin, D W Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks . "Ghost Town" was Melua's first reggae-sounding song.[60]

The iTunes version of the album includes a cover of the Prince song "Under the Cherry Moon" as a bonus track.[61]

Melua's fourth album, The House, was released on 24 May 2010. Songwriters include Lauren Christy, Guy Chambers and Rick Nowels, with William Orbit producing.[62][63]

Melua's fifth studio album, Secret Symphony was released on 5 March 2012 and also debuted high in the UK album chart. The album was produced, arranged and conducted by Mike Batt. Melua said in a statement: "This album was going to be my 'singer's album'. I had always wanted to do this one day; singing other people's songs brings something out of you and your voice that isn't perhaps where you would have gone vocally with your own material."[64]

Zelt-Musik-Festival 2016 in Freiburg, Germany

Melua's sixth studio album, Ketevan, was released on 16 September 2013. It was co-produced by Mike Batt and his son, singer-songwriter Luke Batt, both of whom contributed songs, separately and in collaboration with Melua. When Ketevan entered the UK charts at number 6, Melua joined a very small group of female artists, which includes Madonna and Kate Bush, who have scored six consecutive UK top 10 studio albums. Ketevan also entered the top 10 in France, Poland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland in its first week of release.

Melua with the Gori Women's Choir, 2018

Melua's seventh album, In Winter, was released on 14 October 2016.[65][66] For this record, Melua went back to her native Georgia to record an album with the Gori Women's Choir, a native Georgian all-woman singing troupe. Melua revealed during an interview with The Guardian that her partnership with Mike Batt had come to an end after her last album, as it was a six-album deal with Batt's Dramatico records.[67]

In 2017, she released a cover version of "Fields of Gold", the official song for Children in Need.[68]

In June 2020, Melua supported the Georgian Red Cross Society in their efforts to assist the vulnerable population in Georgia during the COVID-19 pandemic by performing a live charity concert featuring songs that were requested by her followers on her social media accounts.[69] Melua released her eighth studio album, Album No. 8, on 16 October 2020. The lead single off the album, "A Love like That", which was produced by Leo Abrahams,[70] received its first airplay on 30 June 2020 on BBC Radio 2. The video for the song features British actor Billy Howle and was directed by Charlie Lightening,[70] who has directed videos for the likes of Paul McCartney, Jamiroquai and Liam Gallagher.[71] The second single, "Airtime" premiered on 24 July 2020. The video for 'Airtime', which again featured actor Billy Howle and was also directed by Charlie Lightning, was shot around Herne Bay over two days and was filmed according to COVID-19 lockdown guidelines.[72]

Melua appeared in a segment of the 2007 film Grindhouse, written by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. The segment in which Melua appeared, entitled "Don't", was a faux trailer, directed by Edgar Wright and produced in the style of a 1970s' Hammer House of Horror film trailer.[73]

In 2009, Melua was named as the new face of the leading French cashmere designer, Éric Bompard.[74]

On 2 October 2006, Melua entered the Guinness Book of Records for playing the deepest underwater concert 303 metres below sea level on the Norwegian Statoil's Troll A platform in the North Sea. Melua and her band underwent extensive medical tests and survival training in Norway before flying by helicopter to the rig.

Melua later described achieving the record as "the most surreal gig I have ever done".[75] Melua's concert is commemorated in the DVD release Concert Under the Sea, released in June 2007.[76]

In November 2004 Melua was asked to take part in Band Aid 20 in which she joined a chorus of British and Irish pop singers to create a rendition of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to raise money for famine relief in Africa.[77] Then in March 2005, Melua sang "Too Much Love Will Kill You" with Brian May at the 46664 concert in George, South Africa for Nelson Mandela's HIV charity. Melua had been a fan of Queen since her childhood in Georgia when her uncles played the band's music, so performing with May was a realisation of a childhood dream.[18][78] Later in 2005, through her role as a goodwill ambassador to the charity Save the Children, Melua went to Sri Lanka where she observed the work the charity was doing for children in the area after the civil war and Indian Ocean tsunami.[79] In 2006 Melua donated all the proceeds from her single "Spider's Web" to the charity.[80]

On 7 July 2007, Melua performed at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg[81] and in December of that year, Melua released a cover of the Louis Armstrong song "What a Wonderful World" in which she sang with a recording of the late Eva Cassidy. All profits from the single, which entered the UK singles chart at No. 1 on 16 December 2007, went to the Red Cross.[82]

Melua has visited Oxfam charity shops for many years, using them frequently to buy her clothing.[17] She has stated that this is related as much to her dislike of spending and glamour as it is to her support for the charity,[18] and admits that she looks "like a tramp" and that her hairdresser playfully calls her look "the Romanian window cleaner".[83]

Melua is a patron of Fair Trees, the organisation that is trying to stop exploitation of cone pickers in Ambrolauri, Georgia, by the European Christmas tree industry. The local people in this region of Georgia are paid a pittance to risk their lives climbing 30 m high fir trees to collect the cones from which the seeds are extracted and sent to Christmas tree nurseries in Europe. Until Fair Trees came along these cone pickers were given no safety equipment or training, no health insurance and very little pay; every year people are injured and even killed doing this work. Fair Trees grow and sell the only fair trade Christmas trees in the world (certified by the WFTO).

Melua is a patron of the Manx Cancer Help charity, which offers support to cancer sufferers and is based on the Isle of Man. She attended the 2013 fundraising ball for the charity.[84]

Melua has stated that the rock band Queen were a huge influence on her as a child/teenager, with one of her memories of music being her uncle playing records by Queen and Led Zeppelin.[85] She performed with Queen at the 46664 concert in South Africa in March 2005.[86]

Melua appeared on the BBC's The Culture Show in November 2006 advocating Paul McCartney as her choice in the search for Britain's greatest living icon.[87][88]

• Call Off the Search (2003)
• Piece by Piece (2005)
• Pictures (2007)
• The House (2010)
• Secret Symphony (2012)
• Ketevan (2013)
• In Winter (2016)
• Album No. 8 (2020) and acoustic version (2021)
• Aerial Objects (2022)