Remi Nicole is a singer-songwriter and musician from London whose mastery of numerous styles, from doo wop to rockabilly, girl-group pop to soulful rock, is evinced on her new album, Cupid Shoot Me. It is an album full of effortlessly catchy melodies, sparkling arrangements and heartfelt vocals initially created in a front room in north London and finessed in a studio in Surrey. The end result is a record that bears comparison with the pop music that came out of Phil Spector's Gold Star Studios, out of Motown's Studio A, and out of the Brill Building in New York where the likes of Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Neil Sedaka wrote their classic songs.

In fact, it was Sedaka's 1962 hit Breaking Up Is Hard To Do that provided the initial motivation for Cupid Shoot Me. "The start of this album came with that song," says Remi. "I became obsessed with it. I love the harmonies and the 'doo-bee-doo-dow-down's. I thought, 'I love this guy!' I pretty much wrote Cupid Shoot Me after that."

Already an avid record collector, Remi amassed more inspirational music after her label, Island, gave her a turntable for her birthday. Over the last couple of years, she has been listening to everything from '50s crooners to '90s R&B girl groups, traces of some of which can be heard on Cupid Shoot Me. The diverse musical approach reflects the varied nature of its creator. "It's an eclectic album," she reasons, "because I don't have one constant emotion."

Having written and recorded the 11 songs for the album at home, Remi then went into a studio with Grammy-winning producer Mark Taylor – "because of his pop sensibility," she says – who insisted on leaving all of her musical and lyrical ideas intact, quite a compliment from someone who has worked with Rod Stewart, Tina Turner and Diana Ross, as well as Britney, Kylie and Nelly Furtado.

"He said, 'I'm not changing any of this.' So he used the demos I'd recorded as the template for the album. He did put his ideas in sonically but he didn't change any of my arrangements or write any new parts. He just facilitated it. Basically, he let me run wild."

The instrumental parts, Remi explains, were also mainly the result of her bashing about at home, much to the chagrin of the people next door. "Everything on my original demos, including the strings and horns, was computer-generated in the corner of my living room with my own equipment. Did the neighbours mind? Well, they complained a bit..."

Once in the studio with Mark Taylor, Remi presumed her basic performances would eventually be replaced by professional players. Not so. "Mark was the most encouraging person I've ever worked with," she says. He even insisted she play the drum parts. "I really like vintage instruments, and we had a classic late-'60s Gretsch drum-kit, although I can't really play - just a few silly beats. So anyway, I had a bang around, just for fun, and we were about to record, and Mark said, 'We'll do the drums first.' I said, 'Sure, but don't we need a drummer?' He turned to me and said, 'You're the drummer.' I said, 'That's all I can play!' And he said, 'You're playing.' My palms were sweating - I thought he was taking the piss! But I ended up playing the whole record -the toms, the snare and the kick drum, plus I added the hi-hats and cymbals later. We also got Tommy in for some of the more intricate lead instrumental parts."

Remi thoroughly enjoyed the process of recording, including liaising with the 18-strong string section, to whose conductor Simon Hale she would sing the parts, which he would interpret accordingly. "He [Hale] was pitch-perfect," she enthuses. "He was amazing. I love the strings on this record, and he made them happen."

Taking control of every aspect of the album's creation, Remi conceived of Cupid Shoot Me as a sort of concept. The rear sleeve features a capsule précis of the story of the record, the song titles (in capitals) linked to create a narrative arc: "CUPID SHOOT ME because IN MY DREAMS there was a NICE BOY who was LOVELESS. He told me that on ANOTHER DAY there would be many BROKEN HEARTED PEOPLE all STANDING TEARS APART. He said COME FIND ME, I'm fed up of GOING IT ALONE so I'LL BE WAITING for you to come and LOVE ME SO."
"I call it Grease 3," Remi explains, "because every song could be played at a Prom. It's like a fairy tale. There's something quite enchanted about it."

Not that Cupid Shoot Me is pure fantasy: it's rooted in reality, the reality of Remi's life. As a consequence, the album is very much a labour of love. Or rather, lack of love. "I haven't had a boyfriend or been in love - or even close to it - for two years, so the album should have been called Loveless," she decides, adding, "They're not love songs, they're songs about not being in love."

She describes the writing and recording of the album as "therapy" after a tough and testing year. This was followed by what she calls a "spiritual transition".  She has emerged from this tricky period a far stronger person, with Cupid Shoot Me a powerful but accessible account of it all: each of the tracks on the album is a melodic delight; together they comprise a collection that serves as a testament to Remi's ability to create magic out of the most difficult circumstances. "Standing Tears Apart came out of a conversation I had with a friend in which I talked about how I rarely let my emotions out. Loveless was written last year on Valentine's Day when I was in America and I had to hang out alone for a whole day. I didn't want to write a love song because I don't really know what love is, and I even asked myself: have I ever been in love? And I'll Be Waiting is about a girl I heard about whose husband was in the Israeli army and got killed, leaving her a widow. It really affected me."

Cupid Shoot Me is a triumph in that it works as excoriating autobiography and simply entertaining pop music. Standing Tears Apart has a lovely reggae lilt, Another Day is as gloriously infectious as La Bamba, Come Find Me is a soul ballad of the sweetest kind, In My Dreams is exquisite girl-group pop, Love Me So would enliven any party, while Going It Alone, her favourite song on the album – "It was the last one I wrote, and a real breakthrough moment" - is going to sound great on daytime radio. And yet, if you choose to read between the lines you will find signs of the turmoil that led to the album's creation. "Most people who have heard it think it's a really fun and uplifting album when really it's quite dark," says Remi, who enjoys her solitary moments but is also something of a scenester, moving with A-List types and organizing charity celebrity parties which are boosted by the support of her "celebrity" friends.. But music is her focus. She is so proud of Cupid Shoot Me that she now considers it her first album proper, after the tentative, underrated start that was her 2007 set, My Conscience & I. "I feel like that was an album of demos," she says. "This is my real debut. I didn't know myself when I was 23. It was a challenging time. Now I feel like I know who I am and I know what I want, and that's making the whole process of being a musician, and everything it involves, a lot easier."

Remi's record company concur – they believe in her as a multi-instrumentalist, musician, singer and songwriter who could one day diversify into fashion, even acting. They also believe she has massive reach as an artist: Cupid Shoot Me is the sort of accessible but adventurous record that will appeal to everyone from regular punters to, well, Presidents of the United States: her acupuncturist has predicted that she will meet Barak Obama by the end of the year, and Remi has been having dreams about Sasha and Malia Obama being huge fans of hers. And why not? With Cupid Shoot Me under her belt, anything is possible.

Can she do it? Yes, she can.

(Official 2009 Biography)