Curtains open: In walks Che’Nelle, the balanced diet personified. An exuberant songstress of entrancing yet accessible proportions, the twenty-three year old American transplant simply cannot be marginalized and indeed refuses to be defined. She relishes country music but breathes R&B; she is a student of dancehall but has a degree in pop. The true definition of a genre-buster, it’s only natural then that the tunes on her Capitol Records debut, Things Happen For A Reason, is every bit as motley as her lineage, personality, musical taste and upbringing.

“Everybody’s influenced now,” Che’Nelle proclaims. “It’s about everything being mixed, it's an evolution. And it’s exciting and new—that’s what the future’s about.”

The beginning of the future: Che’Nelle (nee Lim) was born to parents of mixed heritage (Malaysian, Indian and Dutch) in a quaint and little known village in Sabah, Malaysia—Kota Kinabalu. Her most cherished hobby there was karaoke. At the age of ten though, Che’Nelle and her parents moved to the relatively vibrant city of Perth in Australia. It was nothing like she was used to, especially as it was faster, and most of the people didn’t look like her. Again though, she gravitated towards the karaoke scene. Karaoke was very much a safe haven—an umbrella under which she came into her own; where she could sing and hone her craft; where there were no boundaries. Here, she could channel the emotional truth of say, Dolly Parton, or the sultry sting of Julio Iglesias even.

“With karaoke it was all about the passion” the agile singer acknowledges. “Whichever artist it was, it was about the passion, the feeling.” Does sheer passion though hold enough currency to translate her trans-eclectic sensibility to Mr. and Mrs. Record buyer? “Definitely,” Che’Nelle asserts instinctively. “But I also feel like a I’m a mixture of plenty things and so I can connect with a lot of people regardless of whether I went through exactly what they went through or not. I’ve got music that’d connect them to me. I'm an international person that delivers her music with feeling.”

The proof’s in the pudding: While still working on her self-produced demo in her excruciatingly modest bedroom studio, Che’Nelle uploaded her recordings on to her now renowned myspace page (www.myspace.com/chenelleworld). Amidst the countless hits of her page, her now manager - radio veteran and club DJ of 17 years - Sir Charles Dixon, stumbled on what was too good to be true. “When I first saw her page I was bit skeptical because her picture was amazing!" Dixon excitedly recollects. "So, I asked to hear some demos and she sent me six tracks. After I played them, I immediately started planning a flight to Australia!"

The rest was and is history in the making.

In late 2005, a meeting at the then Virgin Records was thereafter almost immediately facilitated. The chairman of the label and longtime music business baron, Jason Flom, refrained from much a rhetoric dance and committed to signing her immediately. "The fact that she wrote and produced her demo made me say: 'Wow, this girl is a very unusual talent!' Her voice was very distinctive and her exotic looks immediately separated her from her peers. Plus, she could dance and had tremendous style like the star she is."

The fervent faith of Flom and even other industry onlookers like Swiss Beats and Sean Garrett is not lost on Che’Nelle--she bares and shakes off the pressure like an executive chef. On Things Happen For A Reason, where she either wrote or co-wrote every single song, the spunky vocalist serves up a hell of a gumbo platter chockfull of rug cutters to ditties of the cherubic hue.

"Right Back" which is very much a sparse affair has Che’Nelle amalgamating strength with vulnerability. Over mid-tempo, crisp drum-programming and hypnotic keys courtesy of James Poyser (Mariah Carey, Common, Laury