For those who were used to judging music 'artists' by the cover of a compact disc, it would be easy to categorise Donna Lewis among the so-called divas in the world.
With her sepia-tainted designer poses on the lyric booklet to her hits with titles such as I Love You Always Forever or Without Love, pundits who loved to judge on face value could well have a field day comparing her with other songstresses of the class of Mariah Carey.
However, although Lewis' debut album, Now In A Minute, is filled with tracks dealing with love and emotions, that is where the similarity with Carey stops. Lewis was actually co-producer of the album and responsible for all the songwriting and arrangements.
And Lewis, who will be arriving at the territory tomorrow to kickstart a promotional tour in the region (she will not be playing on Hong Kong), reckoned she would be taking over the production reins on her own for her next album.
'When I first got signed by Atlantic they wanted me to produce on my own because I have recorded all these songs in England,' Lewis said. 'But Kevin [Killen, co-producer of Now In A Minute ] was great and we did some good work together - but we used most of the demos the way they were. I kind-of want to be on my own next time because I have so many strong ideas. It is hard when you are working with another person because they have their ideas too.' In any case, Lewis' first project was nothing but a commercial mega-success. Sales of the album have topped one million in the United States alone and the taster single it spawned, the atmospheric I Love You Always Forever, was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia.
The success could be put down to persistence. Lewis, who hails from a musical family in the Welsh capital of Cardiff, started piano lessons at six and was writing songs by the time she was 14. Subsequent musical training - she graduated from the Welsh College of Music and Drama where she majored in piano and flute - resulted in her turning professional, playing and singing for a number of cover bands, while at the same time recording her own songs in a simple home studio comprising of a four-track, a keyboard, a drum machine and a microphone.
By 1994 she had expanded into more sophisticated synthesisers and sequencers and was finally signed by Atlantic in the US after an unsuccessful search for a label in her native Britain.