the stone diaries.

Byline: Caroline Palmer

At twelve, singer Joss Stone (born Joscelyn Eve Stoker) hastily scribbled down the name of a performer whose album was advertised on television and asked her mother to buy it as a Christmas gift. The singer was Aretha Franklin. Stone became addicted to imitating the smoky, soulful sounds of another era, appearing on Star for a Night (a BBC precursor to American Idol) and taking first place with her rendition of Donna Summer's "On the Radio." By sixteen she had recorded her first album, appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, and performed for James Brown and President Bush.

At first glance the willowy, blonde, and eternally blue-jean-clad Stone doesn't shatter the mold of the fresh-faced bubblegum set currently dominating the airwaves, but when she opens her mouth it's a different story: She sounds like an old soul, with an angst-ridden, water-bubbling-over-the-rocky-riverbed voice that has been likened to those of Janis Joplin and her idol, Franklin. It's an unlikely comparison for a white teenager raised in rural Devon, ...