Good Charlotte

Charlotte Church is breaking my heart. For the third morning in a row I am told to expect her call. This time, they assure me, she really will be at the other end of a phone line. Frankly, I’m not convinced. Neither, for that matter, is Church’s record company, which, like an aghast parent confronted with a debauched 14-year old, seems utterly confounded by the singer.

Several days previously, a sweet lady from the label’s London office, by way of apology for Church’s no-show at an interview, had confessed that her ‘people’ were behaving “a little bit naughtily”.
She meant, I think, that they had been jealous and unreliable with media access. However, my immediate assumption – and yours too, I bet – was that Church had embarked on one of those benders of which she’s – and here I defer to Heat magazine – supposedly so fond.
“She’s probably under a table somewhere, surrounded by bottles of Bacardi Breezer!” guffed a mate when I revealed how Church had left me hanging at the other end of a line for 25 minutes. “Or else she went on a cocktail binge and dropped her mobile down a toilet!”
Church gets a lot of that – pity, derision, schadenfraude whenever she’s snapped tottering, apparently pissed, out of a wine bar at 4am. People claim to respect what she stands for: her lass-next-door ‘realness’; her refusal to tout an airbrushed version of herself to the world. And then they sneer! Deride her as a small town slapper gifted, by some strange accident of breeding, with a voice that could stop traffic.
Clearly, the public – by which I mean you and I – have issues with Church. Do we resent the fact that, for all her wealth and early fame, she has grown up normal and happy? Are we uncomfortable with how at ease she seems to be with her looks and talent? Or is it just that we think her boyfriend’s a twat?
“There’s this image of me out there, and people seem disappointed that I don’t live up to it,” says Church who – to my mild disbelief – keeps our afternoon appointment. “Like, the newspapers make me out to be this party animal but I only go out once or twice a week. I’m 19 – most women my age are out a lot more than that, I can tell you.”
Her no-shows in the days leading to our conversation suggest a diva in gestation but Church, whose Cardiff accent might sound sultry if it wasn’t so earthy and uncontrived, is immmediately matey and gracious. She’s also extremely slick, opening up without prompting about her private life, her reputation for excess and her ‘fella’, the Welsh rugby star Gavin Henson.
How much of it is spin, how much a glimpse of the ‘real’ Church is debatable and there’s something disheartening about a 19-year-old who fields journalists’ interrogations like a veteran. But, Christ, she gives good copy.
“I’m just back from New Zealand to see me fella,” Church reveals, giggling breathily, as if on cue (Henson was a bit-player in the car-crash Lions tour). “It was like a 60 hour flight or something and I was only there three days so I’m knackered. He was worth it though.” She giggles again and, beginning to feel like a schoolyard confidante, I nearly join in.
Church enjoyed New Zealand, partly because, 1,500 miles away , her celebrity has yet to grow to monstrous dimensions. At home, in pokey, provincial, Cardiff things are different.
“It’s getting ridiculous, to be honest. Whenever I go out people are taking my picture with a camera phone. Because Cardiff is so small, I’m like this huge big star there. I’m watched wherever I go and whatever I do. I mean, it’s always been bad but now there seems to be no end to it.”
The sleazy attentions of the tabloid press appear to trouble her less: “The way I see it, they can write whatever they want because I don’t read them and I don’t care. I’m not a celebrity, I’m a musician. I’m not famous for being famous – I’m famous for my music and for selling lots of records. If some newspapers want to make out that I’m something else, that’s their problem.”
Yet Church admits to becoming upset when, as often happens, an anonymous ‘pal’ hawks details of her private life to the red-tops. Invariably the tip-off will contain traces of the truth; she has begun to wonder who, beyond immediate family, she can trust anymore.
“Obviously someone is saying something and, yeah, that is a bit depressing. My mates are important to me. It gets me down to think someone is sneaking off to the papers behind my back.”
We are speaking on the cusp of what will perhaps be the most critical 12 months of Church’s career. She has (rather gracelessly, some have claimed) renounced the music that made her one of the world’s most famous 10-year-olds: cutesy religious songs which pushed their easy listening sensibility so aggressively you feared what prolonged exposure could do to your brain.
Today, Church is seeking to reinvent herself as a mildly raunchy plier of MOR pop, a spiky confluence of Joss Stone and Dido. Her new album, bearing the tongue in cheek title Tissues And Issues is a provocative calling card for the new Church, a spirited and gobby pitch to the Smash Hits demographic.
For what it is, the record is mostly agreeable bubblegum, with Church’s lush, chocolate-tinged voice countering the often lusterless songwriting (the project was co-authored with, among others, former Robbie Williams collaborator Guy Chambers).
“The title is a reference to the things I’ve gone through in growing up. I think it will strike a chord – because everyone else goes through the same sort of stuff as well,” explains Church, adding that she had a hand in almost every track on the LP.
One thing that immediately strikes you about Tissues And Issues is that it’s a bit of hotchpotch. There are straightforward pop songs, ventures into r ‘n b; Mariah Carey-tinged ballads and even an ill judged stab at funk. Is there a danger that so many styles will confuse and overwhelm fans?
Church: “I think it’s good to experiment. The thing is, my voice is so versatile that I can do any style I want. I can sing rock songs, I can do blues. Actually I don’t think there’s anything I cannot do. That’s how versatile I am.”
A few things she emphatically will not do, however. For instance, Church has resisted her record company’s attempts to re-cast her as a high-rent sex kitten.
“At photo-shoots, I always tell them not to airbrush my face if I’m looking a bit spotty or not to try to make my bum seem smaller,” she explains. “Constantly exposing teenage girls to images of absurdly skinny women is wrong. With me, what you see is what you get. There isn’t an image. This is the real-deal.”