Michelle
Branch is 18. She sings. She's cute. And though you probably
think you know what she sounds like based on those facts, chances
are you're wrong. Michelle, who is releasing her major label
debut, the melodic rock album The Spirit Room on August 14,
is definitely not the slick teen queen that those stats suggest.
She's more comfortable playing her guitar than working with
Swedish svengalis, and if she can dance, she's not admitting to
it.
Alicia Keys
is selling truckloads of records as a writes-her-own-music,
plays-her-own-music, seemingly-way-too-young-to-be-so-talented
R&B artist, and it looks like Michelle is going to claim that
wordy title for the rock set. Michelle spent her formative years
in Flagstaff, Arizona, with her Dutch/Indonesian/French mother and
Irish father before moving to Sedona, Arizona at age 11. There,
she continued sing, but wanted to expand her musical horizons. She
got a guitar for her 14th birthday, taught herself how to play it
and immediately started writing songs.
Sedona is known
as a very spiritual place, and fate smiled on Michelle there. A
year after she became obsessed with her guitar, her
soon-to-be-manager, Jeff Rabhan, was being shown a timeshare
resort by a family friend of Michelle's ("It was one of those
'get a hundred bucks to see a timeshare' things," Michelle
laughs to TeenPeople.com. "I don't know if that's a positive
thing for a manager...") The friend tipped Michelle off to
the presence of Jeff, who was working in the music industry in LA,
and rideless, enterprising Michelle was off to give him her demo
tape — driving herself in a golf cart.
Cut to 2001.
Michelle is about to release The Spirit Room on Maverick
Records, the label co-owned by none other than Madonna (who
Michelle was excitedly off to see perform, and maybe meet for the
first time, at Madison Square Garden after she visited the TEEN
PEOPLE office). What does Michelle think of her prospects? "I
think people my age are ready for lyrics that mean
something," she says. With first single
"Everywhere" rapidly finding fans — the video is
cleaning up on Nick Video Picks and recently debuted on MTV — it
looks like she might be right.
Watch Michelle
perform an acoustic version of her single "Everywhere"
at the TEEN PEOPLE office.
Michelle
performs "All You Wanted"
You'll need RealPlayer to see the clips. Click here
to get it.
Tuned
In