An indie songbird with substance

Amy MacDonald is a no-nonsense, sensible star

CAMBRIDGE - Back in April, in the thick of a squall that has deposited one young British songbird after another on our shores, a Scottish musician named Amy MacDonald made her debut US appearance at Great Scott in Allston.

What's that? You've never heard of her? How novel. Apparently the hype machine has placed a moratorium on girls who don't sing retro soul or come equipped with sensational MySpace back stories, or write cheeky tunes in catty vernacular. And that leaves MacDonald, who turns 21 next week, feeling like she may have a shot at sanity, not to mention a career.

"I was never the next anybody," she says, chatting in a hotel room in a near-indecipherable brogue. "Mine was never the 'you must listen to this' record. It's just people telling their family and friends. It's easy. It's natural."

And just like that, in January, five months after releasing her debut album, "This Is the Life," in Britain, MacDonald bumped Radiohead out of the No. 1 spot on the UK album charts.

And she did it with an unfashionably rootsy collection of pop-rock. "This Is the Life," which will be released in the United States on Tuesday, is full of rousing tunes, ringing guitars, and sentiments that the singer unabashedly calls simple. She gives fallen idol Pete Doherty a piece of her mind on "Poison Prince," lays out her dream on "Let's Start a Band," and skewers faux celebs in "Footballer's Wife" - even though she's about to become one, having recently announced her engagement to soccer player Steve Lovell.

A feisty strummer with a throaty delivery, MacDonald sounds nothing like her heroes - the Libertines, Travis, and the Killers - and more like a gutsy Dolores O'Riordan or an earthier Kirsty MacColl. That doesn't stop her from hijacking the Killers' "Mr. Brightside," a staple of her live show, from the glittering Vegas strip to the dusky Glaswegian alleyways.

"Fingers crossed you'll be hearing the next song in the coming months. If not, I won't be back," she says introducing "Mr. Rock N Roll," the album's chiming first single, at Great Scott. It was, in fact, the most added single at AAA radio when it was released earlier this summer. But MacDonald is a no-frills, no-nonsense pop star, "a sensible lady who doesn't fall out of nightclubs five nights a week," in the words of her manager, Pete Wilkinson. The high life in London holds little allure compared to Bishopbriggs, the suburb of Glasgow where MacDonald was born, raised, and recently bought a house. She is determined to balance the demands and temptations of pop stardom with the sustenance of a quiet life surrounded by family and friends.

"It's easy," MacDonald explains. "You just need to make sure you have a say in what you're doing. If it's a friend's birthday, you need a day off. I'm sorry, but I'm going to be at home that day. I'll put the work in, and yes, there are decision-makers at the label, but at the end of the day, it's my career and my life."

Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald may not have given their daughter much in the way of a music education, but they taught her to speak up for herself, which will serve MacDonald well in the minefields of the music business. She remembers hearing two songs at home: "Octopus's Garden" and "Honolulu Baby," which her father sang to her and her sister at bedtime. At 12, MacDonald bought her first CD, Travis's "The Man Who," and promptly fell in love.

She taught herself to play acoustic guitar from a Travis chord book and soon began writing her own songs. During high school MacDonald began playing small shows around Glasgow under the auspices of Impact Arts, a community music group. When she was 17, the budding singer-songwriter sent a demo tape to Wilkinson in response to an ad in the back of the British weekly New Musical Express.

Wilkinson was a songwriter (he co-wrote the title track of Paolo Nutini's album "These Streets") looking for artists to sing his material. When he heard MacDonald, he realized he had an opportunity on his hands - and it wasn't song placement.

"She blew me away. Her songs reminded me of records I have in my own collection, and I was sure I could produce them," says Wilkinson, who ultimately became MacDonald's manager as well. "We spent a year working on more demos, and within a week of playing them for my own publisher, Warner Chapelle, we had offers from every major label in the UK."

The rest is history, or at least a lovely blip on the radar. Talent and tenacity being such poor predictors for success, it's too soon to tell. But there's always Plan B.

"When I got the amazing chance to sign a record deal my mother said, 'Well, you take it now. And if it goes wrong, you're still young. You can go back to university and do whatever you were going to do anyway.' I'd applied and had been accepted. I was all ready to go. I thought I'd be a geography teacher, and I still can be - far, far away from what I'm doing now."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music, go to boston.com/ae/music/blog.