The latest pop phenomenon is 17, stunning, and managed by the Spice Girls' Simon Fuller. But Amy Studt's selling point, says Libby Brooks, is that she actually has talent
Perhaps I'm getting old, but there's something heart-melting about teenager Amy Studt, negotiating her delicate self through the vagaries of imminent pop sensationalism. Her photo-shoot make-up is shimmery and expertly layered, though the lipgloss isn't lasting through her morning toast and hot chocolate.
She is self-consciously circumspect, describing her boyfriend as her "friend", but instantly correcting herself when she fails to note his nickname for the record: "Steve - no, Stevo." And she apologies when she swears. She is, as she says herself, a huge contradiction, and at 17, who doesn't want to be complicated?
The name Amy Studt may not be immediately familiar, but it is likely that her new single, Misfit, will soon have bored its way into the collective consciousness as effortlessly as a termite through stripped pine.
A tiny thing with a big, belter voice, she made her first Top of the Pops appearance at the age of 16, and last weekend her début album, False Smiles, charted at number 24. Every teenager, if only in the brief interlude between neuroscientist fantasies, wants to be a pop star. And Studt is eating, breathing, sleeping the dream.
So far, so S Club 7. But Amy Studt is doubly anomalous. She writes her own material - albeit co-produced with some of the best writers in the business. And though she is managed by Simon Fuller, of Spice Girls infamy, she is a league beyond his usual sugary confections.
Naturally, being 17 has not proved a hindrance. "I don't think my age should have anything to do with it. I'm aiming to reach people who want to listen to my music, not judge me on my age. I write from what I'm experiencing and I'm sure people can connect with what I've been through. I am a teenager and I'm going through teenage things, so I write about them," she concedes. "But I've also been through a lot of things that I don't think anyone else my age has been through."
Such as? She expands cheerfully on her chequered past. "I've been to lots of different schools, due to me being a teenage rebel." She attended a "smothering" Christian school for eight years, before leaving for boarding school in an attempt to escape the religious fervour she so despised. "But I only managed a year. That was what I wrote Misfit about. I was in a dorm with eight other girls who wore pink all the time. They were in this gang called the Happy-Clappy Club, and they made my life hell."
Escaping the strictures of her earlier school environment, combined with academic pressure, also led her to misbehave. "I was 13 years old and off the rails," she says, "thinking I could do whatever I wanted. Then I was being bullied, and it just all got too much. I got very depressed. I had ME for nearly a year. So I went through a lot in my early school years," she concludes. "I can look back and see why things happened."
What a difference a year makes. She tosses her curls resolutely. "You live and learn."
False Smiles is an album about bullying and boyfriends, exploring the small-scale big hurts of playground politics and older brothers' best friends. With the now requisite mid-Atlantic intonation, Studt is by turns angry and wistful, handling her phrasing with aplomb. Meretricious as comparisons can be, she is Avril Lavigne in a vintage dress, or Alanis Morissette before she started simulating oral sex in public.
She says she can't remember a week going by without her writing a song. "I've been writing since I was nine, and I don't really see it as work. I find it incredibly relaxing and it's a real laugh when you're writing with other people."
The record contract came about after a CD she cut for her friends (both her parents are musicians, thus the familiarity with the inside of a recording studio) happened to land on Fuller's desk.
Does she ever feel as though she has inadvertently stepped into someone else's life? "I haven't changed at all, apart from the fact that I'm a lot more tired," she says brightly, pointing out nonexistent under-eye shadows. "I try not to think about this as normal, because then I'd imagine you get warped into thinking that you're special and everyone has to bow down to you. I try to stay very humble. I've been given this great opportunity and I don't want to get big-headed."
Perhaps it is her home town that gives her the edge, she suggests. "In Bournemouth everyone is very down the line, even if they're being very blunt and nasty. I can't stand bullshitters."
Does she feel that young people have enough of a voice? "I've found that it helps if you talk to the older generation like an adult. Like if your parents find out that you've got drunk, the best way to do it is to sit them down and say, 'Look, I fancied a drink, I enjoy a drink, I like the taste, whatever'. Talk to them like an adult, and then you will have a voice because they're seeing you as a person rather than a little child. It's the way you talk to the adults, rather than the way they talk to you."
She didn't attend the anti-war protests that so many of her contemporaries supported this year because she didn't feel sufficiently informed to make a decision, she says. Does the British government listen to young people? "Does the government listen to anybody?" she bats back. "No matter however many millions were protesting, who gives a shite? We'll do it anyway. Labour [Party], great. That was worth it. Ms Dynamite said something really cool - she breaks into a pitch-perfect impression of the singer - 'Ah, excuse me, Mr Prime Minister, you are not God'."
It's hard to approach the Studt phenomenon without either sentiment or suspicion, and harder still to assess her potential in an industry that that eats its own. What would she do if this precarious edifice collapsed tomorrow?
"I wouldn't mind too much, to be honest. I've got so many other things I'd like to do. I'd love to get into nursing. I love art. I'm good with people, so maybe something to do with press and publicity, but I'd still keep on with music. I've got a studio at home so I could be a producer. I'd still be a happy-chappy."
False Smiles is on Polydor