EVEN if you can't place the face at first, you should still have some recollection of Amy Studt as a reluctant and fairly successful singer from her midteens pop phase a while ago.
Now 22, her first brush with fame came early. Bullied in school, the then 14-year-old began to put her emotions in songs for pals and, when her CD found its way to Simon Fuller – the agent, TV producer and music impresario behind the Spice Girls, Bra
nd Beckham and two of the world's biggest TV shows, Pop Idol and American Idol – she was promptly signed up to his 19 Entertainment stable.
By her 16th birthday, Studt was living the ultra-glamorous jet-set lifestyle of a young pop star, being flown first class to Los Angeles for video shoots and the like, while her teenage tormentors were studying for their GCSEs.
"It was really surreal, but I didn't allow myself to be aware of the enormity of it all," she says when asked what it was like appearing on Top of the Pops and gracing the front covers of teenage magazines at such a young age.
"I kind of took in my stride; didn't let myself get freaked out by it. But now, when I look back, it doesn't seem real. It doesn't seem like it actually happened - sort of like a dream."
It was no dream. Studt charted with a string of singles including Misfits and Just A Little Girl, and her 2003 debut album False Smiles was a Top 30 smash in the UK.
Despite this, the girl dubbed "Britain's Avril Lavigne" (despite the fact she had first appeared on the pop scene a full six months earlier) was soon forced to contemplate a new, non-musical life.
The downturn in fortune came when Polydor chiefs decided that her 200,000 album sales were simply not good enough, abruptly dropping the youngster from their roster.
A few weeks short of her 18th birthday, at a time when her school pals were starting to find jobs, Studt found herself staring at the dole queue; without any qualifications, and wondering what exactly she was going to do with her life.
To rub salt into the wounds, she was one of the last to hear about Polydor's decision to axe her.
"One day, I called my management and they asked if I'd seen the article in The Sun about me being dropped," recalls the singer. "I just laughed and said, 'No – but that's ridiculous. Why would they want to print that?' And they said, 'Well, actually, it's all true'."
It's widely reported that, following her divorce from Polydor, Studt went off to earn her crust in a Cornwall coffee shop. But the singer says that wasn't the case at all.
"I get asked this in all my interviews," she laughs, "but it's not the truth.
"It's what I wanted to do. I really wanted to have a simple life, just get away from all of it. And because I'd worked in a coffee shop when I was about 14, on the Isle of Wight, and I absolutely loved it, I might have said I thought it would be quite a nice thing to do. But I didn't actually do it." Nevertheless, she fell off the radar. And for a while it looked as if her name was to be added to the list of child stars who had their brush with fame early and then faded away. But, aged 22, Studt is back on the comeback trail. "I nearly walked away from it all," recalls the singer, who plays Cabaret Voltaire on Tuesday. "Then, of course, you wake one morning up and go, 'I've got this fantastic opportunity to actually do something'."
To pave the way for her comeback, Studt returned to the live stage last year by playing a string of low-profile gigs, before going out in support of Razorlight under the assumed name of Jane Walis. The thinking behind this, she says, was to rebuild her confidence playing live, while getting see what people really thought of her new music without pre-judgments based on her midteens pop phase.
"I wanted fresh ears," she says. "I didn't want people's opinions to be decided before I came out on stage. I wanted them to listen to my songs and make up their own minds."
"I felt that it gave me a chance to rebuild my confidence and see what people actually thought of my new music which was nice.
"Obviously some people recognised me and would shout 'is that you Amy?', but mostly I was able to perform anonymously."
The Portsmouth-born, London-based singer recently released sophomore album My Paper Made Men, and her first new music in four years possesses a understated charm that has drawn comparisons with Kate Bush.
A little older and worldly-wise than when she started out, has the way she approaches songwriting changed between her two albums?
"I wrote using my imagination more, rather than only sticking to real experiences this time," she says. "I found it less restrictive.
"I may start with something true but then I build around it new layers of other truths and un-truths. I find that it gives it much more depth and it's not quite so flat," she adds.
Determined to be a success again, and likely to be one, given that Spice Girls svengali Fuller is behind her, it seems only a matter of time before Studt is a familiar face on the music scene again.
Musing on what she'd like to happen this time around, she says, "We only get one shot at this life and I am making the most of what I've got. I think this is what I was born to do.
"But more than anything," she concludes, "I just want people to hear my music."
• Amy Studt, Cabaret Voltaire, Blair Street, Tuesday, 7pm, free, 0131-220 6176 The full article contains 1002 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
