Ian Brown News

The singer who toured the world without leaving her basement is finally crossing the Atlantic.

An Internet-made sensation in the United Kingdom, Sandi Thom scored a five-album deal with RCA/Sony BMG and topped the charts after streaming a series of live concerts from her London flat. Now, three months after gate-crashing the U.K. charts with a webcam, the Scottish-born singer is taking her nostalgic blend of folk and soul stateside, ready to tell a unique story that is not without controversy.

"Smile ... It Confuses People," Thom's debut album, is out Tuesday (September 12) in North America via Columbia.

Her public profile took off in February, when the then-unknown singer set up a webcam in her basement flat in Tooting, South London, and streamed a live performance for 21 consecutive nights. Thom's three-week "tour" began with 60 people watching and reportedly drew 70,000 fans by the last night.

"I had no idea that the webcasts would become so popular," the freckled 25-year-old says. "It was just a great experience for me. I could make myself a cup of tea in the kitchen, then go out and play."

Columbia's press materials claim Thom launched the webcasts because she was "too broke to go on tour." The singer herself adds that she got the idea after her car kept breaking down on the way to gigs.

"It wasn't a very organized plan, it was just common sense -- let's not make it difficult for people to watch this," says her manager, Ian Brown of IBC Management. Soon Thom's story was all over the Internet and made international headlines, and the music industry started to tune in. "At some point, we had every record company known to man down in her basement in Tooting," Brown says. Thom was signed to RCA in April.

QUESTIONS ARISE

The artist's debut single, "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)" was already climbing the singles chart when major U.K. newspapers began to question whether her rapid rise to fame was "just too good to be true" (The Independent) or "just another rock 'n' roll swindle" (The Guardian).

Feeling misled, the press pointed out that the "basement singer" was already signed to Scottish indie label Viking Legacy when she launched her Web tour and had a publishing deal with Windswept Panic, home to Beyonce. Reporters discovered that streaming and bandwidth were provided for free by Streaming Tank, a professional online company. Also in question was the involvement of PR firm Quite Great, a Cambridge, U.K.-based company specializing in "fan base building" and "Internet strategy," which started working with Thom in June 2005, and counts Mariah Carey and Stevie Wonder among its clients.

Amid these accusations, "Punk Rocker" shot to No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart, having debuted two weeks before at No. 15 on download sales alone. When Viking Legacy first released the single in October 2005, it topped out at No. 55. This week it is No. 31 on the singles chart.

Meanwhile, "Smile ... It Confuses People" went straight to No. 1 in its first week and is now No. 24 after 13 weeks on the chart.

'BRILLIANT STORY'

Columbia executives did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but Thom stands her ground as she gears up for her North American album release. "The media hyped it, because it's a brilliant story. I think it would be unnatural for them not to find something wrong with it, once a new artist is having success," she says. "I have nothing to hide. Yes, I was signed to an indie label and had a publishing deal when I started doing the webcasts. Anybody who saw my webcasts could click on my bio, which was right next to the video. It was all there, right in front of you."

Debates aside, "Punk Rocker" does not sound like your everyday radio hit. Relying on spare percussion and Thom's crystal-clear voice, the a cappella tune wistfully looks back at, paradoxically, the pre-Internet days. In it, Thom, who has been likened to KT Tunstall and Janis Joplin, laments that the '70s were over before she was born.

These days, Thom is no longer webcasting to the world; she's touring the country with a three-piece band. She just played 10 shows in the United States, including New York, Nashville and Chicago. More live shows are planned for November.

"It was great to finally play here in America," she enthuses. "It's amazing to have people come to you after the show and say, 'Hey, I saw you on the Internet. I was there."'

Reuters/Billboard