ROYAL FAVORITE KATIE MELUA EXPANDS HER REALM.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

Teenage jazz chanteuse Katie Melua, who appears Thursday at the Roxy, is an artist most Americans have never heard of.

But give her time.

Overseas, where her easy-listening debut titled ``Call Off the Search'' has already sold more than a million copies and even won her adoration from Britain's Queen Elizabeth - ``I've heard your record on the radio, it's great, isn't it?'' - the 19-year-old singer is a bona fide sensation.

``It's funny, but I don't really think of myself that way,'' she says, with the same soft-spoken manner in which she sings on her debut, released in the U.S. on Tuesday.

Of the album, Britain's Independent newspaper wrote that Melua ``sings and plays guitar with a genuine, if rather old-fashioned talent.''

Melua performs covers of Randy Newman's ``I Think It's Going to Rain Today,'' John Mayall's ``Crawling Up a Hill'' and several others from Mike Batt who, as Melua explains, was responsible for bringing her out of obscurity.

And fast.

Melua was born in the Soviet state of Georgia, where she began singing at age 8. A year later, her heart surgeon father uprooted the family from the seaside town of Batumi to Ireland.

For five years, Melua called Belfast home. At the time, she says, ``My ambition ... was to be a politician or a historian'' - not a singer-songwriter.

But by the time her family settled in Southeast London, Melua began toying with the idea of becoming a musician. She occasionally performed for family and friends but spent most of her days with the computer, recording songs.

``I love music, and it was definitely a passion of mine and something that I wanted to do,'' she says. ``But I wasn't ever really convinced that I was good enough until I met Mike Batt.''

Batt, the man behind the Wombles, discovered Melua at the BRIT School of Performing Arts. He had gone to the school in search of a singer who could interpret standards in the style of Eva Cassidy.

The American singer - who died in 1996 from advanced melanoma - was, as it turns out, a favorite of Melua.

She says Cassidy's ``beautiful voice'' inspired her to write a song in her memory. That song, her first ever, was ``Faraway Voice,'' which Melua performed for Batt.

``I didn't think that I could sing anywhere near as good as Eva Cassidy can, but I'd written the song and wanted to let him hear it,'' she says.

The song now appears as one of two Melua originals on the album produced by Batt for the independent British label Dramatico.

In the months following its release, the album bumped both Dido and Norah Jones from the top spot on the British charts and created a media frenzy over her apparent whirlwind success.

Although she's already started writing songs for the follow-up album to ``Call Off the Search,'' Melua says her sights are set.

``Right now we're just focused on taking my music to the rest of the world,'' she says. ``I haven't even been to Australia and Asia, other places like that. So I guess you could say I'm making that my goal for the rest of the year.''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

KATIE MELUA

Where: Roxy, 9009 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood.

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

Tickets: $12.50. Call [phone] or www.ticketmaster.com.

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Katie Melua has gone from recording songs on her home computer to having Britain's No. 1 album.