Watch the Crying Blood video

VV Brown has a smile that can light up not only a room, but a windowless bunker under railway arches up a scuzzy side street in Shepherds Bush. Eighteen months ago, that was where I first saw the skinny, near 6ft tall singer. At the time, she was a skint, unsigned 22-year-old with a failed shot at pop already behind her. Over two days in the claustrophobic rehearsal room, Brown sang six songs to a succession of record- company A&Rs in the hope of securing a deal. She played solo at a tiny red keyboard, clapping her hands and stamping her feet to keep the beat, smiling as though success was already assured.

“I remember the room,” Brown laughs as we sit in the considerably swankier surroundings of a Manchester hotel, where she is sipping a Malibu and pineapple.

“I had only written the songs a few weeks before, so I should have been nervous, but every time I sat down to sing them, I felt insanely happy. Finally, I had found a sound that was totally me.”

Soon after, Brown — who uses her nickname, VV, instead of her first name, Vanessa — was signed to a major label in a deal that (unusually for a young woman) allowed her to co-produce her debut album, Travelling Like the Light, due out early next year. Since she began gigging in earnest this summer, the response has been ecstatic. In September, she performed on Later... alongside Metallica and Kings of Leon, was hailed one to watch by Vogue, and appeared on the catwalk at London fashion week, with Cheryl Cole and Sugababes, at a charity event hosted by Naomi Campbell. Last month, she joined Damon Albarn’s Africa Express in Lagos and was in Manchester to headline a night of hotly tipped new artists at the music-industry event In the City.

Next week, Brown releases her debut single, Crying Blood, a mix of doo-wop, groovy blues and 1960s girl-group soul that dissects a relationship breakdown with all the sorrow of someone planning a party. Brown has dubbed her sound “musical mashed potatoes”, perhaps because Crying Blood borrows heavily from Bobby Pickett’s novelty hit Monster Mash. Elsewhere on the album, there is a song based on that piano pupils’ staple Chopsticks, a squally mix of swing and indie, a celestial ballad and the clatter of liquid-filled bowls from Brown’s kitchen being banged.

What sets Brown apart from the flurry of post-Winehouse wannabes is the absence of glossy production and an abundance of quirks that reflect the personality of a playful 24-year-old whose self-styled hair is a dinner-plate-sized flat top above a couple of school-girl bunches.

The eldest of six children born to Jamaican parents who run a school in rural Northampton — her dad taught her PE, her mum English literature — Brown grew up musical. She wrote her first song at five, studied classical piano and jazz trumpet, and played organ in church every Sunday. She had a band with her two closest siblings; she played a Casio keyboard, her sister (who now fronts a rock band) a blow-up guitar, her brother (now a drummer) a toy drum kit. At school, she formed what she calls an “Um Banana” vocal group with two friends. “You know those old 1950s songs where the chorus goes ‘Um banana, um banana?’ ” she giggles. “We did covers of those. I used to nag the other girls to practise every break time. I said that if we didn’t, we’d never make it. In the end, they called me a nightmare and quit.”

Brown’s break came at 14, when she was chosen to sing lead in a gospel choir. When that broke up, the funk band who backed them moved to London and asked Brown to be their singer. For a year, her mum drove her from school to north London every Wednesday for rehearsals and open-mic nights. Brown typically earned a tenner, and had to do her homework en route, but the live experience proved invaluable. When she took her A-levels a year early (she got four As and was offered a place to study law at LSE), she decided to defer university to try to get a record deal. “I moved to London and gave myself 12 months to make it,” she recalls. “In fact, it took almost two years to get signed, but I earned enough to pay the bills. I sang backing vocals for Madonna and Westlife.”

Demos that Brown recorded at home got her a deal with a major label, which sent her to America to work with some big-name R&B producers, including Christina Aguilera’s mentor, Ron Fair. “The production took my songs somewhere I had never envisioned,” Brown says. “The more strings they added, the more the music lost its honesty and innocence. I was too scared to say I hated it.”

Brown’s album was never released and she ended up singing backing vocals for Pussycat Dolls. Broke, she sold her keyboard to buy a ticket back to London, where she moved into her aunt’s unfurnished attic and started writing on a guitar bought from a charity shop. She sold two songs to Sugababes and Pussycat Dolls, but it was when she wrote Crying Blood that she found her sound.

“I had been dating a booking agent in LA who was a real arsehole,” Brown recalls. “I loved him, but I knew he was no good. One day, I dumped him by phone and broke down in tears. That’s when Crying Blood came tumbling out of me. It took only five minutes.”

Within a week, Brown had the six songs that earned her a deal with Island Records. Travelling Like the Light, which was largely self-produced, sees Brown play keyboards, drums, brass, bells and a single-string bass. Her nine-year-old twin brothers sing and her sister plays guitar. “All but one of the songs are about my ex,” Brown says. “But most are in a major, melodic key, so they sound energetic and joyful.”

It was on a trip to see her model boyfriend at New York fashion week that Brown became a model herself. On the plane, she sat next to a booker from Select, who tried to sign her. Brown politely declined. “Then she brought out a copy of Vogue and saw me in it. She told me it was fate, and that I had to give modelling a go. I have done a few shoots and shows, but I’m a songwriter, then a singer. Model is way down the list.” Still, there are fringe benefits. “I get free shoes wherever I go,” Brown laughs. “And I love my heels.”

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