NEW POP diva Billie Myers has had a spectacular year by anyone's standards. In the space of 12 months, the 24-year-old former nurse went from being an insurance clerk to the upper echelons of the US charts, and now she looks like repeating that success on this side of the Atlantic, where her debut single, 'Kiss The Rain' is already a big hit.
Billie's introduction to the music industry may not have happened at all, though, when she mistook a genuine offer as a cheap come-on. Billie was shaking her booty on the dancefloor at a London club, when she was approached by a gentleman who enquired if she could sing as well as she could dance. The gentleman in question turned out to be writer/producer Pete Q. Harris, who collaborated with Myers on what was to be her debut album, Growing Pains.
"He was actually looking for someone to front a dance project, so it was quite a normal question for him," she remembers with a laugh. "That was exactly how it started."
Had she been writing songs prior to that?
"I'd always been writing - it was just something I did in my spare time since I was a kid, but I never thought I was going to be a singer or a writer, quite the opposite," she says. Myers always

wrote what she terms "little narratives", but her debut album sees these narratives fleshed out into full-blown songs, crossing a variety of musical genres on the way."It's a reflection of the fact that I don't just listen to one type of music," she explains. "I didn't want to do an album full of 11 'Kiss The Rain's - that would bore me silly. When I was growing up, I listened to two-tone, reggae, punk, motown and bands like The Pretenders. There's nothing set in stone about the music I listen to or the music I write."
Myers' biography makes reference to the fact that a lot of her songs were influenced by her childhood. Her parents split when she was very young, and Billie spent much of her youth in foster care. However, she becomes a little miffed when I put this to her.
"I don't know if I agree with that. I am who I am because of how I've grown up - it stands to reason that your upbringing has an effect on you. Maybe if I hadn't been brought up in foster care I wouldn't be writing quite how I write, but I just don't know, I think it's an unnecessary thing for people to bring up, because it's like saying that when you fell over when you were six and no-one was there to help you, did that effect you as a journalist. It's ridiculous."
Instead, she describes the album as "a collection of emotions", which range from vulnerability and insecurity ('Kiss The Rain'), sexuality ('Tell Me') and anger ('Please Don't Shout').
Billie admits to being "very surprised" by her success to date, particularly in the States. "I knew I wanted to be successful, but I hadn't really thought about what success really was," she says. "Seeing my record going up the American charts came as something of a big and pleasant surprise."
Her elevation to pop stardom has meant something of a drastic lifestyle change for her, "particularly in terms of work and travel. The constraints on my time are a lot more serious - I have to almost book to spend time with my family. I love it and I'm having a great time, but it is a lot of work."
So has she noticed a change in her relationships with her family and friends since her success?
"People don't understand that I can't necessarily spend as much time with them as I want to. I did a show recently and I invited my friends down. They wanted to just hang with me straight afterwards and I couldn't do that because I had a lot of people there, both record company and retail. They actually got very upset with me and very annoyed because they thought that I was changing, that I didn't want to spend time with them. But it was just that I was still working. I don't think they understand that it is not all glamour." n
* Growing Pains is out now on Universal.