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Katie Melua (born September 16, 1984) is a singer and musician born in Georgia. Her first album Call Off The Search was released in 2003 and has reached the top of the United Kingdom album charts.

Early life

Katie Melua was born in Georgia in 1984 and spent most of her childhood in the town of Batumi where her father worked as a heart specialist. In 1993, the family moved to Belfast, Ireland, as her father had won a position there, where she attended Catholic schools.

The family moved again to southwest London in 1998. At the age of 15, Melua won a talent competition on ITV Television by singing Mariah Carey's Without You. In her final years of schooling, she attended the Brit School for the Performing Arts undertaking a BTEC with an A-level in music. She started writing songs in 2001 while studying at the school.

Recording career

Melua was performing at a Brit School showcase when she caught the eye of Mike Batt, an English songwriter and producer who was looking for an artist capable of singing "jazz and blues in an interesting way." He signed her to his Dramatico recording and management company and sent her into the studios.

Call off the Search was released in the UK in November 2003 and featured songs by John Mayall, Randy Newman and James Shelton's "Lilac Wine" as well as songs by Melua and Batt. It became an immediate hit reaching #1 on the UK album chart in January 2004 and the top 20 of the Australian album charts in June 2004. The first single "The Closest Thing to Crazy" has reached top 5 in Ireland, top 10 in the UK, Top 20 in Norway, top 30 in a composite European chart and top 50 in Australia. The second single "Crawling Up A Hill" was top 20 on a composite world jazz tracks chart as of early July and will be released on 18 July 2004 as the second single in the UK. In the UK, the album had sold 1.2 million copies making it 4X platinum and spending 6 weeks at the top of the charts.

She duetted with Jamie Cullum at the Brit Awards in February 2004 which added to her reputation.

Katie leant her talents to Band Aid 20 in November 2004 in which she joined a chorus of British pop stars to create a rendition of "Do They Know it's Christmas?" to raise money for famine relief in Africa. This was in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the original Band Aid.

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