Album: Amy Macdonald

As a gifted young Scots singer-songwriter with more than a touch of the troubadour about her, Amy Macdonald will inevitably be referred to as " this year's KT Tunstall", though such comparisons, I believe, fall far short of this 19-year-old's prodigious talent. Blessed with a clear, powerful voice and a confidence way beyond her years, there's no limit to what she might achieve.

Feisty and articulate, her first singles "Poison Prince" and " Mr Rock & Roll" both offer dressings-down to flawed men, their infectious choruses swept along on jaunty arrangements best characterised as posh skiffle. "Footballer's Wife" takes a similarly jaundiced view of micro-celebrities, Macdonald's sympathies reserved instead for the down-and-out drifter of "This is the Life" and the friend whose "long, lingering glances" she hopes to arouse in "A Wish for Something More": "I think you're beautiful, but your hair is a mess and your shoes are untied," she notes, "but that's what I love best." With her ambition signalled by "LA", but her heart in Glasgow's "Barrowland Ballroom", the world may yet be her lobster.

Download this: 'Mr Rock & Roll', 'This is the Life', 'Let's Start a Band', 'A Wish for Something More'

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