It is morning, and 21-year-old Elly Jackson - the singer in La Roux and arguably the biggest new pop star of the year - is on the Eurostar train from London to Belgium to appear on a TV show. She is grateful for the coffee her press officer has bought her, but wonders if anything stronger is available. ''Have you got my gak [cocaine] as well?'' she laughs.
The hit singles and No.1 album have not made her clam up for fear of adverse publicity. Within minutes of our meeting, she has dismissed Take That as ''gaylords'' and compared today's chart acts unfavourably with their '80s forebears. ''George Michael wrote 'Careless Whisper' when he was 17,'' she says. ''I didn't see [the British rapper] Tinchy Stryder writing a song like that when he was 17, but he still gets the same praise.'' She blames a culture that shuns criticism for the drop in standards. ''It's the media. Everything is 'amazing, brilliant'.'' Radio DJs, she contends, are ''not allowed to slag anything off'', and any negative opinions are kept private.
She says she doesn't want to ''start a hate war'' with anyone, but she does wish she could be more truthful about other artists. ''I can't possibly like everything - how ridiculous is that?'' she says, reasonably enough. But still people recoil when she speaks her mind. ''They're like, 'Really, Lady Gaga's not your thing?' Have you listened to my album? Of course it's not my thing!'' She is aware honesty comes at a price. ''One woman thought I was being anti-feminist because I said I preferred girls with keyboards to girls with guitars,'' she says. ''So she messaged me on MySpace to tell me she wasn't going to play my record any more even though it was her favourite. That's so dumb.''
Aware that her outspokenness is proving increasingly polarising, Jackson draws a distinction between the artist and their art. ''I'm still going to listen to Gary Glitter's records even though he's a kiddie fiddler. Don't let his problems ruin your life. You're not buying their personality, you're buying their music. Of course it's never nice when you're into an artist and you discover they're horrible, and, yes, it would be disappointing if I suddenly found out that Annie Lennox was racist. But you'd still love the music. It wouldn't matter what I heard about Michael Jackson or Prince - you can't just stop liking a song.''
The music on her debut album has more in common with the early-'80s synthpop of Yazoo, Depeche Mode and Eurythmics, her heroes are Jackson and David Bowie, and her dream is to perform a duet with George Michael. ''I love him,'' she says. ''I want him to be my dad!''
Dressed in a green felt trilby, white winkle pickers, drainpipe jeans and a black-and-white jacket with shoulder pads, Jackson cuts a striking figure. With her gravity-defying red hair - held in place this morning, she says, by ''grease and dirt from not washing, lots of mousse, wax and thickening spray'' - and equally colourful personality, she might have fitted in nicely in the era of Lennox, Boy George and Marilyn. ''No,'' she argues, ''I would have faded into the background because I would have been too like everybody else.''
La Roux - 'I'm Not Your Toy'
She admits that, in honour of Duran Duran et al, she and recording partner Ben Langmaid have a ''gak channel'' in their studio, which they use to achieve that distinctly early-'80s treble-heavy sound - the sound of ''everyone being coked out of their brains''. She adds that Langmaid, who is considerably older and only collaborates with her in the studio, leaving the performance side of things to Jackson and her touring band, is ''teetotal, and has been for 10 years. He has finished partying''. He gets annoyed when she turns up to record bleary-eyed from the excesses of the night before.
Not that she parties much - the attention she gets makes her uncomfortable. ''I used to go to illegal warehouse raves for three days, but it's no fun going out now. Besides, I don't want to become like Peaches Geldof. I take my job really seriously.'' She still lives at home with her mum (the actress Trudie Goodwin, who played June Ackland in
The Bill) and dad in south London, but she's looking for her own place in the same area. ''No one recognises me here - the Jamaican man at the newsagents isn't really my market.''
Does she miss anonymity? ''Of course, yes,'' she replies. ''I have to watch what I say, even when I'm walking down the street, in case there's someone behind me who'll recognise me.'' Not that celebrity has really changed her - she is still candid to a fault. ''That's the problem - I'm really open. Fucking hell, I tell randoms I meet in clubs really personal stuff. I'm like, should I do that?''
Paradoxically, Jackson wants some privacy in this age when performers are permanently in the public eye. She yearns for that time when there was some distance between artist and audience and it was ''all about the music, not Twitter and blogging and all that bollocks''. It's this very overfamiliarity with artists that leads to such shortlived careers, she says. That and because: ''The music's shit. I know no one wants to hear it, but that's why.''
Her album was written as a way of resolving painful feelings that resulted from desperately wanting someone who didn't want her back. Those feelings, she says, ''have long gone''. She is not afraid to let go of the agony that propelled her here; she's just pleased that her misery and awkwardness have connected with legions of young women. ''One of the most rewarding things was when a couple of girls came up to me in a toilet and said, 'You've made us feel OK about the way we dress and the way we are.' They had short hair and I don't know if they were gay, but they were slightly quirky. They were like, 'There was no one for us to look up to - we like David Bowie but it's really nice to have a modern role model.'''
Now she is not ashamed to say she'd like to be a star. ''I'd like it to be a worldwide thing. It would be great to sit there at 40 and go, 'Fuck, I sold 10 million records!' But it's not just about money; it's about creating something that loads of people want to buy. I'm not interested in making music for a niche. I'd be in [the band] Hadouken if I wanted to do that.''
Paul Lester
LA ROUX - AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2009
26 Sep - Riverstage & Botanical Gardens, Parklife Festival, Brisbane
27 Sep - Wellington Square, Parklife Festival, Perth
29 Sep - Enmore Theatre, Sydney
1 Oct - Palace Theatre, Melbourne
3 Oct - Birrarung Marr, Parklife Festival, Melbourne
4 Oct - Kippax Lake, Parklife Festival, Sydney
5 Oct - Botanic Park, Parklife Festival, Adelaide