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For a 20-year-old about to release her first album, Buckinghamshire’s Emma Deigman has some impressive admirers. Bryan Adams recently turned up to one of her gigs, Gary Barlow has declared himself a huge fan and, on hearing a handful of her songs, Rod Stewart immediately offered to help her break the States.

Emma Deigman

She’s tipped to be one of the big names for 2009, her debut single “It Was You” will be released at the end of March (2009), and she’s also gearing up to head out on the road with Girls Aloud, something that she is naturally very pleased about. She told us how that came about.

“I’m so excited” she said.

“We just sent all the stuff off to say we wanted to be on the Girls Aloud tour and I think in the end it was down to the girls which was even more exciting.”

Started

It all started for Emma at the Elgiva Theatre in Chesham where, aged just five-years-old she appeared in Annie. She then joined a drama agency and ended up doing the West End and TV.

At seven, she made her West End debut in Les Misérables, playing Éponine in the show's record-breaking, opening run. By the time they asked her back to play Cosette, she was too busy starring in Annie, a role that took the 10-year-old to both the Royal Variety Show and Top Of The Pops, where she performed with Jay-Z.

"Seven of us sang on his hit Hard Knock Life and not one of us knew who he was," laughed Deigman. "I have a picture of me and my mate sitting on Jay-Z's lap, dressed in rags. He was trying to teach us ghetto hand signs. We were more interested in whatever boy band was there."

"Even better was singing at the Royal Variety show with Lily Savage. She was hysterical. All the kids were supposed to look angry, but Lily kept telling us jokes, making us giggle. I remember the whole England football team was there and we were screaming at David Beckham."

Emma also did a stint at the National Theatre, plus several TV series (including one in which her character helped take a real boy band hostage) and, aged 13, she was in the feature film Last Orders with Bob Hoskins and Michael Caine.

Demos

By 15, she was writing songs and sending off demos, although it was when she went to boarding school for sixth form that she knew her heart lay in music.

“I went to boarding school just for the sixth form. I decided I’d do it because it was supposed to be a really good school for drama and stuff but in the end it kind of veered me away from acting I think, it was all a bit too much, a bit in your face.

“Music was the one thing I never studied, I never put it out there, it was kind of the one thing that I had for me and I was writing a lot more at boarding school because I was writing everything down.

"I hated boarding school and used to keep myself sane by writing songs. Being able to put my emotions down on paper helped me get through a few hard years. My dad got cancer - he's in remission now - and I had to leave school to help look after my little brother and sister. One of the songs I wrote at that time, Back To One, is on the end of the album. It's an ode to my parents."

Emma’s album came about as a result of her own efforts to promote herself.

Emma Deigman

“I’ve always looked on the back of albums to see who had written and produced it” she revealed, “and I saw Elliot Kennedy’s name quite a lot on albums that I used to listen to - Spice Girls and Take That – that kind of thing, so I decided to try and get in touch with him and send him a few of my demos.

“Eventually, the second time around, I got a message from him to say come up to the studio and have a chat with him!

"It was the scariest day of my life. We talked about artists we liked and I told him I wanted to make a soul album. Then he played me ‘Some Kind Of Beautiful’, a song he had written more than ten years ago, but never recorded. It blew me away. Eliot said he had never found the right person to sing it. Then I did a version and he said it was perfect. I couldn't believe it. That was the start of the album."

Highlights

Most of the rest of Emma’s album was co-written with Kennedy. For a year, she commuted to Sheffield for writing sessions and to record with a huge band of veteran musicians in Kennedy's studio.

Among the album's highlights are boogie piano-driven, ‘It Was You’, on which Deigman sings about 'a loveable S.O.B.' and missing her Jimmy Choo shoes, a reworking of Teddy Pendergrass' Love TKO and the brass-backed ballad Heart And Soul.

Emma said that she is really pleased with the album.

“The album was so much fun to make” she revealed, “I had the best time.

“The most amazing thing about it is that it’s all live music, that’s why it was so much fun, it was a whole live band, and all of us in the studio were just jamming away and sometimes it would be done in one take …. we were all just dancing round the studios.”

Meanwhile, Deigman has been playing live with her own band and after a show at West London's Troubadour, they immediately offered her a residency. In November, she shared a stage with Kenny Thomas and in December, played to a crowd of 2,500 at London's City Hall, alongside Peter Kay and Bryan Adams.

Having met Adams (who has worked with Kennedy throughout his career) at his own show at 02 a few months ago, Deigman had the favour returned when the Canadian rocker turned up to one of her acoustic gigs.

"Eliot had played him my album and he said he wanted to come see me live," she said.

"I didn't think he would, then I was playing this little club in London and he came and stood right at the front. I was shaking all the way through."

Surreal

Deigman's meeting with Rod Stewart was even more surreal.

Emma Deigman

"My dad adores Rod Stewart," she says. "When we were kids, he had one of those six-slot CD players in the car, full of Rod albums. I was more in to the Spice Girls at the time and kept telling dad to turn Rod off. Then I grew up and realised how incredible he is. His voice is amazing. I also love artists like Lauryn Hill, Aretha, The Supremes and Stevie Wonder, but Rod Stewart is probably my biggest influence.

"A couple of months ago, my mum won dinner with Rod and Penny at a charity auction and took me along. We sat in this restaurant off Park Lane with them and, for ages, I couldn't say a word. In the end, I had to blurt out how big a fan I was or I wouldn't have been able to eat.

"My dad is Scottish and he and Rod got on really well - they even swapped phone numbers! I gave him a CD of a few of my songs when we left, but I didn't think he'd actually play it. Twenty minutes later he called dad to say he had listened to it three times already and absolutely loved it. He said he would do what he can to help me in the States.

"Now my dream is to do a duet with him. A year ago, if someone had suggested that, I would have laughed at them. But so much has happened already, I feel as though anything's possible."