Biography
Amy Studt entered the roster of Simon Fuller's 19 Management and was positioned as the U.K.'s counterpart to Avril Lavigne, although her initial pop appearances had already occurred six months prior. Born in Bournemouth in March 1986, she was raised in a musically inclined household where her father worked as a violinist and conductor who had toured with Roy Orbison, while her mother held the position of head of music at a local school. She acquired proficiency on piano, guitar, oboe, and other instruments through self-teaching and began composing songs at the age of six. Contracting the uncommon bone disease osteomyelitis in her hip at age twelve left her confined to bed, a stretch of time she devoted to sharpening her songwriting. Two years afterward, following her father's counsel, she produced her first demo. One of those recordings reached Spice Girls Svengali Simon Fuller, prompting a Polydor Records contract once she turned seventeen. Her debut single, "Just a Little Girl," surfaced in 2002 and registered modest U.S. airplay, yet twelve months elapsed before the follow-up "Misfit" entered the U.K. Top Ten. The critically acclaimed debut album False Smiles, which incorporated co-writes from Gary Barlow, Cathy Dennis, and Rob Davis, appeared next and moved nearly 200,000 copies inside the U.K. In January 2004 the album was reissued with a cover of Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do," though the move failed to restore momentum and she was dropped from the label months afterward. After briefly weighing an exit from music in favor of a coffee-shop job in Cornwall, Studt resumed activity in 2007. Touring the U.K. as support for Razorlight under the alias Jane Wails allowed her to evade attention and manage stage fright. Work on her sophomore project My Paper Made Men, involving Madonna collaborator Guy Sigsworth, culminated in a download-only release under her own name in April 2008.
Albums
Singles
