The Guardian profile: Joss Stone

With her astonishingly mature, emotive black soul voice the Devon teenager is an R&B sensation in the US and a talent that knocks 'reality-pop' for six. But would a Mercury music prize for cover versions add to the respect she's won?
Joss Stone at Glastonbury
Pixie with pipes: Joss Stone wows the crowd at Glastonbury. Photo: Getty

Joscelyn Stoker, as her parents know her, made a minor bit of history this week, as both the youngest person ever nominated for the Mercury music prize and the first nominated for an album of cover versions. Therein lies the source of a debate that has divided critics since Stoker - who took Joss Stone as a stage name in her early teens - was launched last year by Virgin Records.

Her album, The Soul Sessions, crept into the chart in January and has hung around the Top 10 ever since, selling 670,000 copies in the UK and a further 1.7m worldwide. This is the sort of result underperforming Britrockers rarely achieve. But Stone is considered by some to have cheated a bit by falling back on covers; in her case, on covers of obscure old soul tunes.

Covers are deemed the lazy woman's way out, almost karaoke. "[Her nomination] detracts a bit from others on the list who spent a long time writing their album," says the journalist Hattie Collins, who wrote a story about the singer for Blues & Soul magazine. But because Stone is a trifling 17 years old (and, by happenstance, a photogenic little pixie) she has also had many springing to her defence.

So for every reviewer who griped that Stone was just retreading old tunes by the Isley Brothers et al, another maintained that The Soul Sessions was a startling, almost-great, debut. The Mercury judges, for instance, excused its lack of original material, describing it as "a remarkable showcase of classic soul power".

The secret of her success - and this is where opinion is unanimous - is a voice that should not belong to a white, Devonian teenager (from Ashill, near Tiverton). Stone has somehow been endowed with the pipes of a black American 25 years her senior.

"When I found out she was white, I said, 'I can't believe it'. She was totally amazing," says "Shabs", the head of Relentless Records, the Virgin subsidiary that sells her CDs. "I've never worked with someone I've believed in so much." As his other star act is his old friends, the trouble-magnet rappers So Solid Crew, this is saying something.

Stone's deeply emotional style, which compelled Shabs to drive to Devon the day after he heard an early demo, has elicited comparisons with Patti LaBelle, Mavis Staples, and even, rather overheatedly, Aretha Franklin.

On which subject Collins, who writes about British urban culture, sounds a slight cautionary note: "She is amazing, but it's premature to be comparing her to Aretha. Mary J Blige gets that, and she's been around 10 years. Maybe in 30-odd years ... "

Premature or not, Stone is currently seen as an antidote to the poison of reality-pop, which has devalued the singles chart and discredited the music industry. The only young British singer with a similarly incongruous sound is fellow Mercury nominee Amy Winehouse (William Hill's odds are Winehouse 6-1, Stone 10-1). But although Winehouse is arguably more accomplished, writing her own material, Stone has attracted more media attention.

Her camera-friendly blonde freshness has something to do with it, but she has also benefited from something looks can't buy: the respect of the black American music scene. Across the Atlantic, Stone has been welcomed as an R&B sensation. Her album, recorded in Miami and New York, was produced by the veteran belter Betty Wright, and features guests such as Angie Stone and Timmy Thomas. Wright introduced her to Stevie Wonder, who was generous in his praise ("I didn't know what to say," admits Stone, offstage the archetypal, ineloquent teenager).

Style-setting magazines such as Vibe embraced her. The upshot is that she was known in America first, and by the time Virgin was ready to launch The Soul Sessions here, the label had a fantastic back-story on which to build.

The girl from "the English village of Devon", as the Philadelphia Inquirer put it, got a US recording deal, with EMI, before a British deal. This is notable because the US music business customarily looks askance at UK acts, who have a reputation, not undeserved, for being snide and uncooperative. The handful of young Brits who have been successful in the US, such as Dido and Coldplay, are those who have not been imposingly English in their dealings with Americans.

So imagine the delight of EMI America's Steve Greenberg when he came across the 14-year-old Stone via a video of her performance on a 1999 British TV show entitled Junior Star for a Night, her sole flirtation with pop cheesiness. Here was a talent young enough to be malleable - she wouldn't be pulling the typically Brit stunts of refusing to record "idents" for Midwestern radio stations, or of being narky to Des Moines record retailers - but sophisticated enough potentially to compete with heavyweights such as Beyoncé and Mariah Carey. He signed her when she was barely 15.

Shabs says of her place in soul music: "Her being white has made it harder to break her. It's very similar to Eminem doing what he's doing."

But Collins says: "I've been asked, are they putting more money into marketing because she's white? There does seem to be an awful lot of push behind her. Beverley Knight said recently that when she started, nobody was interested if you were black."

But Stone's age appears to be a greater sticking point. Can someone so recently a schoolgirl (she got three GCSEs last summer) really convey the cavernous pain of songs such as those in her opening album track, The Choking Kind? She does feel patronised by the doubters. She told the Guardian writer Alexis Petridis last autumn: "How old do you have to be to hurt? I think some people have forgotten what it's like to be a teenager."

Collins agrees: "You don't have to have experience to sing with heart. Whether or not she's had her heart broken, it sounds like she has. She might have gone out with some boy who wasn't nice to her." In fact, Stone's 22-year-old boyfriend is a Devon lad who worries that his constantly travelling girlfriend will run off with Justin Timberlake.

But Q magazine's deputy editor, Gareth Grundy, who has just commissioned a lengthy Stone feature, sees her age as a positive advantage. "With the voice she has, her youth doubles the 'wow' factor. And she's done smart things like cover the White Stripes [whose Fell in Love with a Boy recently became her first hit single]. Who knows what kind of records she'll be making at 25?"

His enthusiasm is shared by Matt Mason, the editor of the urban culture magazine RWD, who ranks her as "an important artist on this scene".

"She crosses boundaries and is really inspired by old soul, but because she's so young she appeals [also] to young people. She could well be up for a Mobo [the black music awards, held in October], which would cause an outcry, but it's clearly music of black origin."

Stone herself claims she was barely aware of the singularity of her voice while she was growing up. "I don't think of myself as a great singer at all," she's said. "I only ever sang for fun, so I can't quite work out how I got here."

Her route to success involved Junior Star for a Night, which she entered "for a laugh" when she was 12. Her version of Aretha's Natural Woman so impressed the judges she won. ("God knows why, because I thought I was really shit.")

She attracted a bit of industry interest at the time, but life went on as normal for the Stoker family. Her father was, and is, a fruit preserver, and her mother, Wendy, who is now her manager, let holiday cottages. Joscelyn, who hated school, knew only that she would not mind singing professionally, but she suffered from a severe lack of confidence. Even now, on stage, she blushes, squirms and almost apologises for her presence.

After Greenberg's sighting of the Junior Star footage two years later, and his signing her up - after a five-minute audition - it became clear that Stone would not be staying on at school for long.

Although it feels as if she has only been around for five minutes, she's already preparing for the release of her second album, Mind, Body & Soul, in September. An advance press release makes a point of announcing that she has co-written nearly the entire thing.

To further ramp up her credibility, co-writers have been revealed as the venerated Motown producer Lamont Dozier and Portishead's ghostly frontwoman, Beth Gibbons.

Success has been nearly instant, as it often is in the Pop Idol era. The difference, however, is that those around Stone expect her to be a leading light of British pop when the Michelle McManuses of the world have become a mere footnote in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles.

Life stages

Born Joscelyn Eve Stoker, April 11 1987, Dover, Kent. Brought up in Ashill, Devon, where her family still live

Education Uffculme comprehensive school, near Cullumpton


· In 2001, aged 14, auditioned for the BBC talent show Star for a Night which she eventually won singing On The Radio by Donna Summer

· After being spotted by two London producers she was signed by New York record label S-Curve, run by Steve Greenburg, in 2002

· Toured the United States to rave reviews in 2003, aged just 16. Sang in Canada and at venues in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego

· Released debut album, The Soul Sessions, in January this year, and appeared at Glastonbury this summer

Stone on chart music "It's got so image conscious and boring, I didn't want to go down the usual pop route - because it's not me"