Sweet music: Sarah O'Connor

Charlotte O’Connor is a 17 year old acoustic singer and songwriter from Blackburn, Lancashire who is currently creating great interest in the music industry. At the age of five, wanting to impress her friends, she sang ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ at the family Christmas dinner, at the age of 15 she picked up a guitar and she hasn’t stopped since!

(Charlotte O'connor - Believe)
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Influenced by artists like Damien Rice, Pink and Michelle Branch and with abundance of passion, determination and confidence the future looks bright for Charlotte. But this amazing girl doesn't want to be famous: "I was walking in Blackburn town centre recently and I heard a guy saying 'That's Charlotte O'Connor.' I didn't like it. It felt strange." Charlotte just wants to get people to relate to her music and to like it. "I don't really like thinking of the fame side of things."

After recently winning a competition at Sir Paul McCartney's Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in Liverpool, Charlotte was spotted by Sam Bush - son of legendary music promoter Mel Bush, who is credited with discovering David Bowie and Queen. One Sunday at about 4pm last august, Charlotte got a phonecall from Sam Bush and he asked 'Can we meet up?' Sure, she said, some time next week maybe?, but Sam responded: 'What about in say four hours?' and he drove all the way up to see her there and then.

As far as songwriting goes, Charlotte is inspired by anything and everything. "When I was younger I was a bit too young to be writing love songs. I still am really, so I based my songs on my sister's relationships," says Charlotte. "There's one song called Crazy About You based on her. I think she was a bit shocked when she found out!"
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For more information visit her:
Myspace

Website
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(Thanks to the Lancashire Telegraph)

Sweet music: Agyness Deyn

Most of you maybe know her as an english supermodel, but the British supermodel is releasing a single titled 'Who' on June 23rd. The 25-year-old Agyness collaborated with the New York band Five O'Clock Heroes on the single.

(Five O'Clock Heroes & Agyness Deyn - Who)

Although lots of people were afraid it would hurt her career, after seeing this music video they will definatley change their opinions. Celeb-blogger Perez Hilton thinks Agyness sounds 'a little Kate Bush-y'.

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Agyness Deyn (born Laura Hollins) is from Littleborough in Greater Manchester. Deyn's working life started serving cod, chips and mushy peas part-time at 17, which she did in Ramsbottom. Agyness has come a long way in the nine years since she first came to the attention of the folk of Rossendale – winning the Free Press’s Face of '99 competition. The 16-year-old – then Laura Hollins – was living in Cloughfold, when she and Barney Horton, 19, were chosen as the king and queen of the Valley catwalk. The pair won an exclusive photo shoot with Free Press snapper Tony Cross in what was one of Laura’s first modelling assignments. Even at that early stage she had the potential to go the very top, according to Tony. He said: ‘She was quite natural in front of the camera and was quirkily attractive and beautiful.’

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Deyn has appeared in advertisements for Blugirl by Blumarine, Burberry, Cacharel, John Galliano, Gianfranco Ferrè, Giorgio Armani, Mulberry, Paul Smith, and Vivienne Westwood. In 2007 she won the 'Model of the Year' award at the British Fashion Awards. But besides that Deyn is tipped as a successor to Kate Moss!

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(Thanks to Rossendale Free Press)

Sweet music: Lights

Her real name is Valerie Poxleitner and she describes herself as 'small girl who dwells in Toronto and makes music.' Lights is a Canadian synth-pop singer and songwriter best known for her song February Air, featured in the February 2008 Old Navy commercials. She composes and sings powerful and beautiful electronic indie-pop songs.
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(Lights - February Air)

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Lights grew up in a musical family. When asked about when she wrote her first song, Lights has said "I was eleven, and I learned three chords on the guitar it was the first time I really learned how to play guitar and I wanted to write a song with them so I went down to my mom and I said pick a number between 1 and 150 and she picked 5 or something, I can’t really remember the number, but I went and opened up the Bible and there was 150 Psalms already written so I went to the number she chose and wrote a song with that and that kicked off the biggest thing of my life."

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Lights got her break while modeling at the age of fifteen for a Wal-Mart flyer. The makeup artist on the shoot heard her sing and introduced her to singer-songwriter Jian Ghomeshi, who developed her first demo and now manages Lights.

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For more information, check out her myspace

Sweet music: One Night Only

One Night Only is another indie-rock band from the UK. They started out as a bunch of school friends 'just making noise' in their rural hometown of Helmsley in North Yorkshire where they got banned from their rehearsal spaces because they were too loud. "The first one was in a historic village with a monastery and we were just doomed from the start," recalls George. "Then we went to this dugout place underneath the town hall and trashed that as well. Well, we didn't trash it, they just didn't like the holes in the walls they kept finding."

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(One Night Only - It's about time)

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Last October Steve Lamacq began spinning the demo of You And Me, prompting the band to really take themselves seriously. George dropped out of school and they frantically phoned every venue in the UK asking for gigs. They got about ten and the A&R pack duly pounced: some caught them first at Liverpool's Cavern Club in front of a bus full of their most mosh-happy York fans and within a month every major label in the UK was trekking up to their rehearsal room for a personal showcase.

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"We knew friends' bands who'd had a bit of interest from labels and gone down to London to play to them and it was like 'go away, come back when you're a bit older'. So we didn't want to do that, we cancelled all our shows and said 'if you want to see us you'll have to come to York'," said George."Then we hired out the rehearsal room, practiced there for a week, got really tight and then we did individual showcases. We were so tired by the end of it. We couldn't be arsed to talk to them. We'd had all week of doing three a day, all asking the same questions." A funny fact about the band is that they have recorded and uploaded their own message onto Limewire, preventing people from downloading their music and explaining that downloading music that way is "a bit illegal".

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Click here to read the entire interview

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For more information, visit their:

Official website

Myspace

Sweet music: The Kooks

Say hello The Kooks: a band of four guys who studied at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music. The Kooks is a indie rock band formed in 2004.


(Naive, live at Leeds)

Lead singer and rhythm guitarist Luke Pritchard got bassist Max Rafferty involved in a college project, which formed the base of the band. After getting lead guitarist Hugh Harris and drummer Paul Garred involved, they chose a band name from a song off the 1971 David Bowie album Hunky Dory, entitled "Kooks".

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The Kooks released a debut EP and played Brighton's Free Butt festival, and were instantly signed to Virgin Records. Pritchard wrote The Kooks' hit song "Naïve" when he was only 16 years old, which after release catapulted the debut album, Inside In/Inside Out into the UK Top 20 charts for more than half of 2006.

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The band mix a whole range of styles and influences within their music. Influences like Bob Dylan, Jack Johnson, The Kinks, The Beatles, Velvet Underground, David Bowie, The Doors and Jeff Buckley. They seem to blend quite edgy and bouncy pop guitar riffs with a nice solid beat. But it is lead singer Pritchard that really gives the band a unique sound and defines them from the majority.

For more information/music, check out their:
Official site
Myspace