Caro Emerald speaks ahead of Birmingham gig

Gorgeous and stylish, Caro blends retro jazz with modern pop to create her signature sound.

The Amsterdam Conservatory jazz-trained vocalist is an original pop star with the look of a Hollywood icon of yesteryear and a voice that oozes warmth and vitality.

And she'll bring her latest tour to Birmingham's Symphony Hall tomorrow, with support from Irit.

Caro always wanted to be a performer. "I think so, yeah. I remember when I was small wanting to become a princess. But I guess after that, the first thing that comes to mind is wanting to be a singer. When I was 11 I discovered I could sing and never wanted to be anything else. That is quite unique I think."

And yet being in the public eye means she spends plenty of time doing other things. There's constant travel between venues, promotion, interviews and more. Then she spends plenty of time writing and recording. So nothing gives Caro greater pleasure than doing what she loves most – singing.

"I love the singing part. Well, there's lots of fantastic things about my job. The travelling, the people, there's a lot of luxury and comfort. Everyone's always happy. To actually be singing and have that great magic feeling when I'm on stage: I really feel connected to the music and the musicians on stage, and the people are listening and enjoying themselves. That is so hard to compare to anything else – the best feeling in the world I think."

Caro's debut album Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor was written and produced as a studio project by David Schreurs, Vincent Degiorgio, Jan van Wieringen and van der Leeuw, with Caro as the starring artist. It became the most successful Dutch album of all time, beating a record set by Michael Jackson's Thriller. It earned Caro the Dutch music prize, Edison Award, for Best Female Artist.

Her second album, The Shocking Miss Emerald, was similarly successful and in addition to hitting number one in Holland it also went to number one in the UK.

Caro will have plenty of songs to choose from when she performs at Symphony Hall. "Oooh. Well, I have several favourites. What I always find is that there are songs I like to hear and songs I like to sing – they might not be the same one. One of my favourites to sing is I Know That He's Mine, but that's not one I'm going to be doing on my tour. I really love singing new material and I'm going to do that on my tour. It's a new challenge and I have to try to remember the words. There's an energy necessary for that. I'm on top of my game when I try to do a new song."

In order to stay on top and thrill fans in concert, Caro tries to stay healthy. She avoids bad foods and makes sure she keeps in shape.

"That's the not so good part about my job. Everybody else around me gets to have a good rock 'n' roll time and what I usually do is try to get in bed early: no drinking, no smoking, no shouting in bars after the gigs. We do five gigs a week and that's pretty tough. I also try to eat healthily, so the guys next to me are eating cheesecake while I'm eating quinoa and steamed fish. But it's really worth it to live as healthily as I can because it keeps me fit throughout. It's five-and-a-half weeks of touring and it's pretty exhausting, so I need all the energy I can get."

She has a strong bond with her band and before she takes to the stage each night there's a group hug.

Caro has already started work on her third album and the working title is Emerald Isle – a title that isn't linked to her tour of the British Isles.

"A-ha! No that's not it. I can explain. We've been working for some time on a new album and we've been inspired by new musical genres.

"We put a lot of musical genres, influences and sounds in our music and we've been inspired by this really interesting and mysterious genre called exotica.

"Exotica had already started in the 19th century but in the 1950s and 60s it was a genre where people would try to make music as if they were from far away exotic islands. They would copy something they didn't really know, like jungle sounds, and weird, weird bird sounds. But those sounds are also pretty cool to use in your production because it gives a lot of atmosphere – you can hear it in the new show. We use it big time in every kind of way on the existing and new repertoire, so the idea is that we're going to take people to a far away place – to Emerald Island."

By Andy Richardson