Katie Melua

Although Katie Melua was born in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia she identifies herself as British- Georgian after her family moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Georgian Civil War. Her breakthrough to stardom came when Terry Wogan began playing her single "The Closest Thing to Crazy", from her debut album Call off the Search, on his hugely popular BBC Radio Two programme. Originally due for release in January 2004 Wogan began playing it in November 2003; it was subsequently released early, in an attempt to reach the much coveted Christmas No.1 spot. It reached No.10.

Her second album Piece by Piece spawned several hit singles including "Nine Million Bicycles" which drew criticism from an unlikely quarter, cosmologists. Dr Simon Singh a well known writer and TV personality who specialises in explaining complex scientific theorem (in a manner that is easy to understand), took offence to a line in the song:

"We are 12 billion light-years from the edge/ That's a guess / no-one can ever say it's true/ But I know that I will always be with you"

Which he said was incorrect in several ways. Singh complained in The Guardian newspaper that the universe is, according to "the very latest data", actually 13.7 billion years old. He wrote "the next line in the song is unforgivable. To say that the age of the universe is 'a guess' is an insult to a century of astronomical progress. The age of the universe is not just 'a guess', but rather it is a carefully measured number that is now known to a high degree of accuracy".

Singh then wrote replacement lyrics that he felt would be more accurate and allay his concerns. Melua performed a revised version of the song on BBC 4 radio's The Today Programme in October 2005. Unfortunately Singh's lyrics had too many syllables:

"We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe/ that's a good estimate with well-defined error bars/ Scientists say it's true, but acknowledge that it may be refined/ and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you"

In October 2007 Melua released her a new album Pictures, which quickly reached gold in the UK. It will be her last collaboration with Mike Batt, the producer/songwriter with whom she has worked from the beginning. He is the writer of her two biggest hits "The Closest Thing To Crazy" and "Nine Million Bicycles".