Gabriella Cilmi

She’s just signed a lucrative deal with Universal Repulic, is the youngest artist ever to be nominated for the UK's prestigious Q Award, achieved platinum sales in Australia with her debut 'Lessons To Be Learned', and has just received six ARIA Award nominations, including Best Female Artist and Single of the Year, making her the most nominated artist for the 2008 Awards. Not bad for a 16 year old from the Melbourne suburbs!

Up until a few years back, Gabriella was just your average school girl growing up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, with little ambition of a career in music. Bred on her parents’ record collection which featured the likes of Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Suzi Quatro, Blondie and Joan Jett, Gabriella’s earliest forays into music weren’t very promising. Her distinct vocal style saw her get knocked back for roles in school musicals, while her piano teacher told her at age eight that she lacked the discipline to go anywhere in music.

Gabriella didn’t care. Even by that very early stage, she was already starting to discover her own alternative musical path. She was soon besotted by the music of some of Australia’s biggest rockers – Silverchair, Grinspoon and Jet. She also fell in love with Led Zeppelin. Once in high school, she took up jamming with some friends in a garage band on the weekends, covering the songs of her favourite bands like Kings of Leon. Around this time, her mum organised for Gabriella to record some rudimentary demos with a friend.

But music was still very much just a hobby rather than an ambition. Then everything changed one afternoon at an Italian festa in her hometown of Melbourne. It was at this street party that one of her uncles insisted she jump on stage and do a song. Gabriella was reluctant but finally agreed, got up and belted out a version of The Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. Most of the elderly Italian audience didn’t know what the hell to make of it, but unbeknownst to Gabriella, also in the crowd was one of Australia’s foremost record company execs, who just happened to be out for a day with his family.

And so was set in motion a most excellent adventure. Soon she found herself being flown around the world, exhibiting her talent to international record company execs in Europe and the US. The famous Island Records soon signed on as her international label.

Next, Gabriella travelled to Los Angeles where she began working and writing with Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper from the famed British production team, Xenomania, the people behind hits for everyone from Sugababes, Girls Aloud, Kylie Minogue and currently Franz Ferdinand.

Nothing from those first sessions in LA would survive to make it onto LESSONS TO BE LEARNED, but it was a chance for Gabriella to get to know Brian and Miranda and for the trio to experiment with different styles and slowly start shaping Gabriella’s own distinctive sound. “They taught me so much because I’d never done this before,” she says. “I learnt so many new things.” The real work for the album would begin about five months later on the other side of the world, in a famous house in the town of Kent in England.

Gabriella, Brian and Miranda holed themselves up and spent almost three months writing and recording. Those sessions were followed by more work together in Australia, then early last year, Gabriella moved to the UK to complete the album [keeping up her schooling by correspondence] and the team went back to the house in Kent for another month of work.

With 'Lessons To Be Learned' finished but still months away from release, word started to get out that something very special was in the offing and things started happening quickly for Gabriella. At the end of last year, the producers of Later With Jools Holland, got to hear an advance copy of “Sweet About Me” and insisted that Gabriella appear on their end of year show, despite the fact that the single was still ages away from release.

Three years later, with 'Lessons To Be Learned' released and ‘Sweet About Me’ dominating the airwaves and charts in Australia and beyond, 2008 has been a whirlwind of activity for Gabriella Cilmi internationally and locally. As well as top charting singles, she’s performed at some of the world's most high profile festivals including T in the Park, V Festival and Glastonbury, and it doesn’t look like it will slow down any time soon - which is all the more extraordinary when you come to learn that Gabriella Cilmi is all of 16 years old!

With the backing of a major label, a voice that sounds like it fell from the heavens straight into the petite and pretty form of this young vocal powerhouse, a single and album with proven success, it looks like Gabs is set to become a household name across the globe!

A taste of many extraordinary things to come, no doubt.

By Penny Newton