We’re at BBC Television Centre, about 10.30pm. The recording of Later with Jools Holland is drawing to a close. It’s been a long night, but the director wants to reshoot a couple of numbers. First up is a newcomer, an elfin young singer with raven hair and icy blue eyes. Co-performers, including Travis, Nick Cave and the harp-strumming Joanna Newsom, look on as she begins her second take. It seems to be going well until she holds up her hands and the band grind to a halt.

“Sorry! I f***ed it up,” says Candie Payne sheepishly. The audience, wilting under the studio lights, groans. Has the new girl gone to pieces? Has she hell. After a brief pause, Payne launches into I Wish I Could Have Loved You More for the third time. Her hips swing to the melancholic groove. Her voice rings out, deceptively strong and sparsely beautiful. At 24, she has the imperiousness of a bruised, battle-hardened diva. Take three is a cracker.

“You’ve got to get it right,” Payne explains three days later in a Liverpool restaurant. Thinking that they had finished for the evening, she and her band had sat back, relaxed and watched the other artists perform. “We were having a little whisky and falling in love with Joanna Newsom. So I was a little bit p***ed when we were asked to do it the second time round.” It was brave of her to stop and demand a third take, I suggest. “Well it’s important,” she insists, running her fingers through her hair. “It’s my first TV. You’ve got to get it right.”

There’s something serious, and exacting, about Payne. She’s proud of her Liverpudlian roots, but don’t pigeonhole her as a “professional Scouser”. And woe betide anyone who falls into the trap of comparing her understated, white-girl soul with Dusty Springfield’s. There are superficial similarities, Payne concedes. “I don’t oversing and she didn’t oversing, I’ve got a good range and she had an incredible range.” But that, she insists, is as far as it goes.

Her debut album, also titled I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, has plenty of retro nods: Motown, big band, cabaret. But it’s more modern than that – the meticulous production and bluesy laments of Portishead’s Dummy are a more useful touchstone. Simon Dine, with whom Payne has worked for four years, writes the melodies in response to her lyrics. She keeps the subjects simple: jilting, being jilted and – on her favourite, All I Need to Hear – unrequited love.

Despite their careful studio stylisation, the songs fly when they are performed live, especially in smaller venues. “It’s really, really exciting, almost in a power-happy way – ‘look what I’ve created!’ ” Payne giggles. Among the smitten are Mark Lamarr, the Bees and Holland, who was particularly taken by her onstage slink.

Payne grew up in a family of six, the daughter of a car salesman and a housewife, both music lovers. She describes herself as quite earnest: “Not the funny one who made jokes.” That role was taken by her two elder brothers, Howie and Shaun, who preceded her into music: Howie was the frontman of the defunct Merseyside outfit the Stands, while Shaun plays drums for the Zutons.

Shaun is “very outspoken in his opinions”, she smiles. “We did a session for 6 Music the other day and we weren’t as good as we normally are. Shaun called me up straight away and said, ‘You had a bevy last night didn’t you?’ ” Howie is working on solo material and she would love to collaborate with him, “But I’m a bit afraid. He’s my big brother, and if it matters what anyone else thinks, it’s him. The time I went in the studio with him was the most nervous I’ve ever been, and I’ve been in the studio with Paul Weller.”

That was when Weller (“a friend – he knows our Howie”) sang backing vocals on Payne’s cover of his own song Shopping. The Modfather’s retro inclinations seem well matched with her own penchant for eyeliner, chic black outfits and vintage syncopation, but it’s another comparison she bats away. “Everyone gets the impression that I’m one of these Mods who’s obsessed with the Sixties but I never have been. If I had to pick an era to live in it would be the Thirties and Forties. The big-band era, to be singing with Artie Shaw.”

Still, image is a powerful part of her gamine appeal. The first magazines to pick up on her were Vogue and Elle, not NME or Q. This is a woman in full control of her look. “I don’t want a stylist, I don’t want a make-up artist. Having someone else’s opinion is not necessary.”

Musically, though, the advice comes from all directions. And amid all those male mentors, there’s one woman who really counts. “My mum’s my biggest fan. She’s got a very good ear. If I sing something to my mum and she cries, I know it’s good.” How often does she cry? “Most of the time.”

— The single I Wish I Could Have Loved You More is out now, and the album of the same name will be released on Deltasonic on Mon. Candie Payne plays the Gloucester, Brighton, on Sat (escapegreat.com ); Bar Academy, Birmingham, Tues (birmingham-academy.co.uk)

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