Songwriter brings her ‘Pictures’ to Birchmere

Katie Melua is on a North American solo tour featuring songs from “Pictures,” her latest hit album. On this third trip to the States, she visits The Birchmere Sunday and Rams Head Tavern in Annapolis Monday.

Born in Georgia (former Soviet Union) 24 years ago, the singer/guitarist/composer was in her early teens when her family moved to Belfast. Five years later, they settled in London where she studied at the BRIT School for Performing Arts. Even before graduating in 2003, she topped the UK charts with her first album, “Call off the Search.” By 2005, she was the biggest selling UK female artist in the world.

Soon after composer/producer Mike Batt discovered her at the school and produced her first album on an independent label, she appeared on The Royal Variety Show. An instant hit, she has reigned at the top of the charts ever since and uses her popularity to benefit charities. Her many awards include a World Music Award, a Golden Camera Award and two German Echo Awards.

“Mary Pickford,” a melodic recap of filmdom’s early founding, leads off the 12 tracks inspired by movies and secret inner visions. With the exception of “In My Secret Life,” the closing cover by Leonard Cohen, the original songs pay tribute to the silver screen, from the romantic “Spellbound” to “Scary Films” and thoughts of zombies marching through the mist. Because this is Melua’s first concept album, she made certain that each song generates emotions typical of a specific genre.

“I composed ‘Spellbound’ quicker than most I write,” she says. “There’s no pattern to how I work. It can take a year or a day and I always end up writing somber songs. I have no idea why, but anything you grow up listening to affects what you create.

“I’ve been singing and surrounded by music all my life. In Georgia, the electricity was off most of the time, so we heard only the classical music my mother played on the piano. The few times the electricity came on, my uncle played heavy metal. We heard Irish folk music while in Dublin, and over the years I listened to many pop songs and subconsciously found my own favorite styles.”

Melua’s compositions are a mix of appealing melodies set to jazz, reggae, Spanish, western and various sophisticated beats impossible to ignore. Although she commenced her studies unsure if she wanted to perform or work for a record company, she is riding high today as a British idol and owner of her own record company with control over every process from concept to finished album.

Career highlights range from setting a Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater concert (in an offshore oil rig in the North Sea) and having a Dutch tulip named in her honor to performing in South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s AIDS Charity.

“I was blown away when I got a phone call from Queen, the band, asking if I would go with them for that event,” she says. “Now I’m in the States doing the kind of acoustic show I’ve been wanting to do and loving it. The reaction is even better than the first time I was here. Most of the shows are sold out and people seem to know the songs. It’s exciting to realize I can do this completely on my own without a band.”