Carly Binding: Driving Miss Carly

An hour before our scheduled interview, Carly Binding's record company rep calls to say that the marketing department has that morning decided to hold back release of her debut album. The planned February release of 'Passenger' is now scheduled for sometime mid year.

Carly is herself just getting the news when I duly arrive at Festival Mushroom Records HQ, but typically can see a bright side to this further delay in advancing her solo career.

"It means we can possibly record another track. I think the point of holding it back is that we finished it, had Christmas, mixed it and then sent it to mastering. So there was no time to sit there and listen to it. I reckon that after a few weeks of listening I could figure out the song that it needs. (If anything is missing it's maybe a one minute, there-and-gone 140bpm track.)"

From the record company's point of view the delay gives space for a strategic third single from the album and the possibility of a true radio hit. The two singles to date have performed well, both achieving better than Top 20 chart positions and Top 10 airplay. A true hit single however will help build her profile locally and internationally.

MD Mark Ashbridge says that the all-but finished album has already been sampled internationally and has a priority commitment from FMR Australia, plus "low level" interest in the US which is their target start point for Carly. Atlantic has given a "very favourable reaction", requesting a boardroom showcase in late March. In addition there is interest from an un-namable UK label. "With such a strong picture building internationally it seems sensible not to rush the album out", he explains.

For performers there's no escaping your past so let's just get it out there: Carly Binding was a member of that original made-on-TV all-girl pop group TrueBliss. Fans then (back in the Popstars glory days of '99) referred to her as 'Coppertop', and later likely some pre-teen variation on 'traitor' when she became the first to shuck the Popstars limelight.

"I left after less than a year – in May 2000 I jumped ship. I was writing songs and I didn't feel like being famous for another four years and then try to do an album – I wanted to start on the album then and there."

Then and there was three years ago – Taking It Easy the first single re-introducing Carly Binding came in June last year, after more than two years of anonymity.

"For all intents and purposes I was a has-been to the public and that's what I wanted."

Carly's unlikely preparation for TrueBliss fame and (negative) fortune was a two year Diploma in Opera at the Eastern Institute of Technology, completed in Hastings. It involved music history, theory and sight singing – she was 19 when she graduated.

"The funny thing is I auditioned for a vocal course, not knowing what discipline it was and from my first day started learning to sing in Italian, German and French! I really fell in love with opera and started to see the pop in music like Mozart, but at the end realised it wasn't what I should be doing."