» VIEW COLBIE CAILLAT LYRICS

A great song, says Colbie Caillat, should lift your heart, warm the soul and make you feel good. Taking her own sound advice, "Coco", the debut album by the 22 year-old Californian singer-songwriter is simply crammed full of them.

In an age when marketing has been elevated above content and so many songs are written and produced to a pre-ordained formula, Caillat comes as a welcome breath of fresh air. Records these days seem to fall into two categories. The vast majority tend to contain one or two good tracks which you download to your computer so that you never have to listen to the rest of the album again. Far more rare are those that demand to be listened to from start to finish, with every song in perfect symmetry. Think of the kind of vintage, organically-crafted albums that Carole King or Joni Mitchell used to make. Thankfully, it's a tradition that is being kept alive today by the likes of Norah Jones, Jack Johnson - and now Colbie Caillat.

She began singing with serious intent at the age of 11 after hearing Lauryn Hill's version of Killing Me Softly. "I think her voice is absolutely beautiful and it made me want to start singing so I entered a talent show and of course I sang a Lauryn Hill song." As she grew older, however, her father offered one crucial piece of advice. It was all very well having a great voice, he pointed out, the people who command real respect in the music business are the songwriters. "I thought about that for a long time", she says.

In truth, it took some time coming - but when it did, the floodgates opened. "I needed to play an instrument to write songs and although I had piano lessons as a kid, it never went anywhere because I was never in the right state of mind to practice," she recalls. Surprisingly, it wasn't until she was 19 - little more than two years ago -that she eventually took up the acoustic guitar. "I wrote my fist song after my very first guitar lesson and then it just all flowed out," she recalls. "If something's biting me I hold it in because that's the kind of person I am. Then it comes out in songs. Things builds up inside of me and I'll write three songs in a weekend. It's a release. I don't choose what to write about. It's just there."

By age 21, Californian vocalist Colbie Caillat had evolved swiftly from an aspiring R&B/folk singer to a pop sensation with the marketing assistance of a little networking tool called Myspace. She grew up in Malibu and Ventura County and caught the music bug at an early age from her father Ken Caillat, an established audio engineer who helped produce Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Tusk. Songs were often mixed at the console in her Malibu beach house, filling the corridors with the sounds of Billy Idol, Pat Benatar, and other '80s pop/rock. As a child, Caillat gave piano lessons a try but wasn't inspired until she turned 11 years old and became enthralled watching Lauryn Hill sing in Sister Act 2. Immediately realizing that she wanted to be a singer, and with her parents' encouragement, she started taking vocal lessons. At age 15, in a twist of fate, she met Mikal Blue, a producer who had previously worked with Five for Fighting and Carrie Underwood.

"The songs always start put with me," she explains of the collaborative process. "I'll be sitting around at home getting bored and something will come out. Then if I get stuck, I can take it to Mikal or Jason. Having people you trust to bounce ideas around keeps the creativity flowing."

Once she had a bunch of songs, she put a few of them on MySpace, more in hope than expectation. "Nothing much happened for a few months," she remembers. "Then I wrote this song called Bubbly and put it up there and it got this huge reaction. I mean thousands and thousands of hits every day."

In the end, she became the number one unsigned artist on MySpace for four successive months, garnering an almost unbelievable 10 million plays. Record labels started courting her and she signed with Universal Republic because, she says, they offered her total creative freedom. "The great thing about MySpace is that you can build up an army of fans and then when you go to a record company, there's no point in them trying to change what you do because it's already been tried and tested," she points out.

Quite what it is about Bubbly that struck such a chord, she's still not entirely sure. "I guess it's the simplicity of the lyrics and the melody," she says. "It's meant to make you feel good and everybody can relate to it." And "Coco" - the album is named after a childhood nickname which stuck - is full of similarly memorable songs imbued with an irresistible warmth which draw on a rich array of influences. "I love all kinds of music and I've been influenced by all of it," she says. "Classic rock like Fleetwood Mac and the Steve Miller Band. Original soul like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Lauryn Hill. Bob Marley and reggae, John Mayer. Anything that makes you feel good."

And from the sunny, upbeat promise of songs such as Bubbly and Oxygen to the gentle, semi-r&b groove of The Little Things and the lilting reggae of Tied Down, "Coco" is one of those classic albums that simply makes you feel glad to be alive. "You make me smile, please stay for a while," she sings on Bubbly. It really ought to be her mantra.

Jason Lymangrover, All Music Guide