A Branch of Her Own

For someone so young, American singer-songwriter Michelle Branch sure knows all about calling the shots.

After all, she has accomplished a lot on her own terms. She won a Grammy award for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals this year for her duet with Carlos Santana, The Game Of Love.

On the strength of three huge radio-friendly singles, namely Everywhere, All You Wanted and Goodbye To You, which hit the top 10 on the Billboard 100 chart, she sold over 2.5 million copies of her 2001 debut, The Spirit Room, worldwide.

She even got to work with rock veteran Sheryl Crow and Jane Addiction's guitarist Dave Navarro.

But Branch is no diva. She is merely adamant about staying `very real' in a pop scene littered with pre-packaged and barely-dressed nymphets.

Even so, Branch, who pens her own songs and wields a guitar, is not offended by those who insist on comparing her with the Britneys and Christinas of the world.

"It's not what I'm into, but I'd say there's room for all sorts of things," she says.

There is a quiet defiance in her voice, which is tired and cracking up over the phone line. It is late and she is on a bus touring with the Dixie Chicks.

Asked if her lack of image is an image in itself, and that it is carefully engineered by her music label, Madonna's Maverick Records, she swiftly counters: "I wouldn't work for anyone who would tell me how to be. I want people to talk about my records. Not how I look."

Whatever it may be, the formula works. Even as her career gathered steam, Hotel Paper, her second album, was finished before she even knew it.

Written on hotel stationery during her non-stop travel over the past two years, she says her new album is a more accurate portrayal of her romantic entanglements.

Once criticized for being too inexperienced to write about love, the musician says "I've always had control of my lyric content, even when I wrote my first album at 14."

She admits it was, then, pure fiction.

But no longer. She has since been burned in love and hopes the guy who inspired her new single, Are You Happy Now?, realizes the song is about him.