The closest thing to boring

New entries from Daniel O'Donnell, Lionel Richie, Harry Connick Jr and even Engelbert Humperdinck have joined the light jazz of Melua, Norah Jones and Jamie Cullum in a way that suggests the nation's young people have given up on music altogether in order to spend more time sending text messages.

This trend was confirmed by the British Phonographic Industry this month, which revealed that 40 to 49 year-olds are currently buying more albums than 12 to 19 year-olds for the first time ever.

To explain this unlikely statistic, some point to the wide availability of music in supermarkets today, attracting people who would never dare enter a trendy record store. Others blame the proximity of Mother's Day for this week's sedate chart, or the lack of a current unifying rock scene to excite teenagers. So what is an exotic-looking teen doing in the midst of all these cardigans and sensible shoes, playing her first London concert since the millionselling success of her debut album? Melua was here last night because of the scarily powerful force that dwarfs every other sales factor in the current music market - Terry Wogan.

Through his Radio 2 breakfast show the jolly Irishman has become a hit-making machine, first bringing the late Eva Cassidy back from the dead with a number one album in 2000, now putting Melua's music on constant rotation even though she was an unknown on a tiny record label.

Watching her here, her appeal is obvious, her high, breathy tones swooping over easy-on-the-ear arrangements. Randy Newman's piano ballad I Think It's Going To Rain Today was sweet and soothing, as was a simple, acoustic Faraway Voice.

Yet it was still difficult to understand how she has attained such extraordinary levels of popularity with music that seems designed to fade into the background, forgotten and ignored. She may sound vaguely jazzy but there was no improvisation here, the songs existing as shrink-wrapped replicas of their album versions. Covers of the Cure's The Love Cats and I Put A Spell On You were isolated lively moments in a soporific set.

Mike Batt, the man who discovered Melua at Croydon's Brit School and wrote many of her songs, was at the piano this evening. He has had plenty of chart success, most memorably with classical-lite violinist Vanessa Mae and of course, the Wombles. In that context Melua looks credible in the extreme, but in reality her success comes in a depressingly dull period for music.

Katie Melua
Ronnie Scott's
Frith Street, W1D 4HT