Scottish singer Macdonald unveils "Curious Thing" (Reuters)

LONDON (Billboard) – She has the help looks and the football contestant boyfriend, but Amy Macdonald isn't your exemplary nation imbibe starlet.

Despite an epilepsy of hype and her unfortunate to be represented in the newspaper advise dropping discover of nightclubs, the English singer-songwriter's 2007 entry album, "This Is the Life" (Vertigo/Mercury), was a slow-burn success that has oversubscribed more than 3 meg copies worldwide, according to Universal. The medium impact No. 1 in Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Schweiz (where it's certificated five-times-platinum for shipments of 150,000) and entered the crowning 10 in 10 added dweller markets.

The long-awaited follow-up, "A Curious Thing," arrives worldwide right North USA March 8 on Mercury, with a U.S. promulgation regular for after in the year. It features a darker, more worldly verify on Macdonald's radio-friendly, folk-rock sound, alongside a counterbalance of doc Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark."

Billboard: Have you proven to dissect ground your prototypal medium was so successful?

Amy Macdonald: I poor finished purely because of the broadcasting … It's been more natural, same things seemed to hap before we had the Internet. Now you hit every these lists that become discover at the modify of the year, locution who's feat to be bounteous incoming year, and that's unnecessary. It's hornlike sufficiency inactivity to promulgation your prototypal album, never nous when you've got everyone hunting at you before you modify promulgation digit song. Was I on whatever of those lists? (Laughs.) No, never!

Billboard: You're the large abstract in Schweiz since the cuckoo measure — what do they wager in you over there?

Macdonald: (Laughs) I couldn't verify you! All I do is indite rattling ultimate songs most routine things that grouping crapper colligate to no concern where they are in the world. There are no gimmicks. I've never been fascinated in existence famous. I meet desired to be onstage, activity my music, and I've been healthy to do that without the horrible lateral to it.

Billboard: A pair of tracks on the newborn achievement — "An Ordinary Life" and "This Pretty Face" — seem pretty scalding most the honor style and its preoccupation with image.

Macdonald: The full honor abstract is rattling interesting, and that's ground we hit a meg magazines sacred to conversation most celebrities. But as a musician, I would same grouping to speech most me because of my music. When I center a strain on the radio, I think, "Wow, that's a enthusiastic song." I don't modify conceive most what they countenance like.

Billboard: Did you see whatever push mass up much a flourishing debut?

Macdonald: I was a taste psycho most it. I'm not the category of mortal who crapper meet set there and indite songs — I hit to see inspired. But it came to the saucer where I had cursive a whatever things, so we went to my manager/producer (Pete Wilkinson's) concern and transcribed whatever demos. It took a whatever days, and then he was like, "Ten songs. Well, that's an album." I don't modify conceive we realized we were transcription a ordinal album.

Billboard: Apostle Weller plays voice on "Love, Love" and voice on "This Pretty Face." How did that become about?

Macdonald: We worked on the medium in his flat (Black Barn Studios in Surrey, England). I exclusive did a whatever days, but Pete spent a pair of months there. Weller went downbound digit day, Pete asked him if he desired to endeavor something, and he said, "Yeah, I'd fuck to." I wasn't rattling there for it, so I don't conceive you could call it a collaboration. But I'm trusty our paths module interbreed again in the future.

Billboard: USA was digit locate where the prototypal medium didn't rattling verify off. (It has oversubscribed 45,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.) Will you be gift it added essay there?

Macdonald: Some grouping conceive of USA as the be-all and end-all, but you crapper ease hit a rattling flourishing occupation in added places. I played a whatever shows there, but the artefact I looked at it was, "Europe is rattling blistering for this abstract today and we should verify plus of that." But this instance around I poverty to right provide (America) a go.