My choice for this Friday’s Fabulous Female is a woman whose voice I first heard in San Francisco, soaking in the smells and sights of the incredible Ghiarardelli chocolate store near the Fisherman’s Wharf.  Her voice was so mesmerizing and spine-tingling, I had to figure out who was singing this song. The answer was Katie Melua, a singer-songwriter from Georgia (Russia), now British citizen and one of the top selling artists in the UK.

I did a little research on Katie for this article and found out that she actually caused quite a scientific stir with one of her songs.  A Guardian writer and former scientist, Simon Singh, took offense to her new 2005 hit , “Nine Million Bicycles” for being scientifically inaccurate because of this line:

“We are 12 billion light-years from the edge. That's a guess - no-one can ever say it's true, but I know that I will always be with you.”

He felt this line was an assault on the work of cosmologists, since we are actually 13.7 billion light-years from the edge, and it is not a guess.

His comments sparked a rebuttal column by Mike Batt in the Guardian (author of the song) and a change of the lyric to:

“We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe, That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars, And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you”

In this video, you can hear Katie sing the lyrics for each:

Regardless of the scientific accuracy, the song did very well in the UK, reaching the third spot on the singles chart in the UK that year.

OK, now that we have the science out of the way, let’s get to the song that made me stop in my tracks.

Any readers in their mid-30’s to 40’s knows very well the first American hit for The Cure, 1988's “Just like Heaven”.  Katie’s  version was recorded for the 2005 movie “Just Like Heaven” starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. I love the classic version of the song, but this mellow, personal version by Katie makes me melt.

So please enjoy our Friday Fabulous Female Katie Melua and let her voice and guitar tickle your spine.

Previous Fabulous Females:

Melissa Etheridge sings Janis Joplin

Florence and the Machine