First Draft of DPS [Text]

At 19, the beautiful, Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Amy Jackson translates her awe for soulful sixties divas into a captivating style. Tibyaan Nassir revels in her unvarnished truth.

Wherever she is, Amy is, undoubtedly, a south London girl, with the swag, the attitude and not-so-perfect vocabulary to match. (“I can be rather presumptuous at times,” she teased.) When she found out a boyfriend had cheated on her, she tracked him down in Nando’s and punched the hell out of him. (“Fools and Their Tiny Things,” her hit single, was written about the breakdown of that relationship.)

Amy loathed her music teacher in high school (“He kept telling me to breathe properly when singing and that it was okay to look fat!”)

Fatefully, her mother couldn’t enrrol her into Brit School, a performing-arts school whose graduates include Amy Winehouse and Leona Lewis. “Yeah, it upset me. Then again, everything happens for a reason. I wouldn’t be where I am today, talking to you guys, if I had gone to Brit school. Hell, I would be touring America with my third album!” she joked.

She went through the fashion rites through school life as a London girl. “From twelve to thirteen I was just crazy,” she remembers. “Cute checkered dresses. Big round glasses. Two short ponytails. I called myself ‘Cute Lil’ Misfit’ haha. Then I really got into hip hop and R&B and became a Rude girl – in Adidas and big hoop earrings, with a spit curl! Tiny Nike backbacks. Mine was black and had like a massive little ‘I <3 Me’ key ring”.

However stylish and hip her teenage life was, Amy admits that she would hide in her room listening to Tracy Chapman and still admires the Spice Girls. “It was always pop music,’ she says. “I would dance ro Destiny’s Child, and oh my God, there was a time when I was obsessed with Usher. I always imagined singing with him on stage, being his ‘Bad Girl’ and ‘Boo’. Wow. I was obviously too cool.”

But Amy’s musical epiphany came at fifteen. “I remember being home alone in the bathroom and singing. I loved the echoey-feel of the room, you know? When suddenly you sound like some long lost sister of Beyonce or something. I was actually singing ‘Dangerously in Love’. I loved it, the feeling of letting out this roaring voice”. Her mother then came home, hid behind the door and recorded her voice. “I was so mad at her when I found out she was spying on me. I felt kinda humiliated. But when I heard it over, while considering deleting it, it felt... strange. It felt kinda refreshing. I wanted to share this feeling with the world. People listening to me on their iPods.


In Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards, Amy was as independent as ever. Her mother was not there to see her. "It would be great to have her here," she explains, "but there were other matters to be handled." Instead, she rings her from the red carpet to announce that she has won her first Grammy (for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance). Her mother just screams and cries and laughs (it would be difficult to hear anything else above the roar). By the time she performs, Amy has beaten out the Jonas Brothers and her friend Taylor Swift for Best New Artist.