NEW YORK -- If KT Tunstall wins a Grammy next month, she might consider thanking two of the most unlikely people in her acceptance speech. One would be American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee. The other, jazz trumpeter Olu Dara, father of the rapper Nas.
Without them, Tunstall might still be strumming a guitar in London coffee shops. "Me, McPhee and Nas's father need to go to a wicked bar in Times Square and suck one down and talk about how great my career is," Tunstall, a Scottish singer-songwriter, says with a laugh. Nas inadvertently handed Tunstall her first big break when he pulled out of an appearance on an influential BBC show in 2004 after his father fell ill, allowing Tunstall to fill in.
Partly thanks to them, Tunstall's debut album, Eye to the Telescope, has sold 3.5 million copies worldwide and earned her a Grammy nod for best female pop vocal performance. Many of her songs have been featured on hit TV shows.
Along the way, Tunstall has remained fiercely grounded, even while rubbing shoulders with her musical peers when she was invited to the Grammy nomination announcements in Los Angeles in December. "I was at a photo call with Justin Timberlake and Mary J. Blige just going, 'Oh my God.
I was unemployed like five years ago. This is not who I am!' " she says.
"A light bulb went off just five minutes after me getting stressed out about it, going, 'You don't have to do anything. Just carry on. It's what got you here.
' " What got Tunstall here is her blend of alternative folk-blues and a soulful voice that has drawn comparisons to Bonnie Raitt, Dido, Bjork and - this one irks her the most - Joni Mitchell. "I'm nothing like Joni Mitchell. I'm flattered, but I don't want to be Joni Mitchell," she says, sipping a glass of red wine in a SoHo hotel.
"There's no point in trying to be Joni Mitchell. It's a complete losing battle." Virgin Records, Tunstall's label, is perfectly happy with that.
"I'd love to clone her," says Jason Flom, chairman and CEO of the label's U.S. branch.
"She is the kind of artist you look for and you dream about when you're in this business." One of the odder quirks in Tunstall's career has been that her songs have been embraced by U.S.
TV producers, even though she dislikes television, especially reality music shows. "My status as a musician in America is pretty much cemented by Katharine McPhee, which is really interesting and funny for me because I've never been polite about how I feel about shows like that," she says. Even so, Tunstall, 31, authorized McPhee to use her foot-stomping, woo-hoo-heavy Black Horse and the Cherry Tree because she realized she'd be a fool to decline.
"When she sang that song, less than one per cent of the population knew it. I was doing quite well, but it was a totally underground song. Then she does it, and it worked.
I have people at my gigs going, 'I heard Katharine McPhee play your song and I love your album and your gig was amazing.' That's why you say yes." Soon, Tunstall's music was all over TV, appearing in Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy to name a few.
"It's the new MTV - it's a platform for new artists," she says. Her second, as-yet-untitled album, is due by spring and, like her first, is being produced by U2 and New Order collaborator Steve Osborne. "I can't wait," she says.
"It's faster, it's more mysterious, it's more raucous. There's a lot of the live energy in it." The half-Scottish, quarter-Irish and quarter-Chinese singer has had a weird, 10-year road to the big time, starting in the university town of St.
Andrews. Amazingly, she didn't listen to pop music until she was 17. Her physicist father and schoolteacher mother chose not to have a stereo or TV at home because her younger brother is deaf and the noise interfered with his hearing aid.
Even so, Tunstall started piano at age six and became accomplished on the flute and clarinet. She formed her first band in America while attending high school there for a year and studied drama and music at the University of London. Returning home, she played in cafes.
She fell in love with the music of the Flaming Lips, Tom Waits and PJ Harvey, even changing her first name from Kate to KT partly in homage to the latter singer. Yet try as she might, Tunstall's own music had a more mainstream bent. "I sort of had an epiphany four or five years ago.
I went, 'I write pop songs.' "There's no point in trying to turn them into something else because that's not genuine." If she does win a Grammy, don't expect her to change.
She refuses to put platinum records on the walls of the same London apartment she's had since before she became famous. She shares her home with Luke Bullen, her boyfriend and drummer, has the same friends she had before getting a Grammy nomination and loves nothing else than to go to the pub, have a pint and chat. "I think if I was 25, I'd be in rehab," she confesses.
"But I'm 31, and when you fight really, really hard to get somewhere - which I did - you get your priorities sorted out.
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