As a songwriter and a woman, Joss Stone is finally growing into her already matured voice.
With her debut album "The Soul Sessions," at the age of 16 Stone blazed into pop and soul music with a voice that sounded 20 years old and an album mostly made up of old soul songs. While it made a dent on the pop charts, the album also became a surprising choice for 20- and 30-somethings who embraced the neo-soul movement.
Her second album, "Mind, Body & Soul," while Grammy nominated and still driven by her voice, seemed tailored more for the teen pop market. A big part of that was the original songs, mostly written by a 17-year-old Stone, which often sounded more like MySpace journal entries from a teenager rather than the poetic lyrics of a professional songwriter.
Thankfully, the songwriting on her third album, "Introducing. ... ," released earlier this year by the now 20-year-old singer, is more mature. Most of the songs have a very adult edge to them, which is not a bad thing, and they also seem to reflect what Stone was truly thinking when she was writing.
"If you read what somebody is writing from when they are 16 to when they are 20, there will be a lot of change," Stone said by phone from her brother's "flat" in London. "But that's just life, only I'm having that conversation over a melody."
Her lyrics deal heavily with topics of the heart, especially love lost and redemption. What makes the songs poignant, however, is that the stories are personal, the pain comes from inside her, the rediscovered strength is her own.
Justifiably, she takes great pride in her lyrics on "Introducing ... ," and wants to make sure that the music is treated as art and not a commodity produced by a pretty face. To that end, she also pushed for an artistic cover — and she got it, as the picture is of her back covered with tattoos "that all tell a story" — instead of just a posed picture.
"If you're going to put your heart into an album and call it, why would you cop out on the actual art? It's important to me," she said. "I thought about it for weeks, and really wanted to come up with something that told a story."
Along with love, a common denominator on the album is the influence of music, which she said is both her source of power and her weakness, because she "falls for singers, because I fall in love with their music."
She speaks to that most clearly on the appropriately titled "Music," which features a rare guest appearance from Lauryn Hill. Yet even without Hill, the song would have been the album's strongest.
Throughout the song, the simple message is one of optimism, as well as the transcendental power of music. It also helps explain her popularity, which continues to span generations.
"I look out on a crowd and I see a 10-year-old girl with her mom or dad and grandparents, and it's great," Stone said. "Music is for all ages. I always try to explain that there isn't a box for music."
If you go
What: Joss Stone, Ryan Shaw
Where: Deer Valley Amphitheater
When: Thursday, 6 p.m.
How much: $43-$73
Phone: 435-655-3114
Web: www.ecclescenter.org
E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com