IT'S all go for up-and-coming pop star Emmie! Not content with recording a new single for release after Christmas, the 23-year-old singer is on a promotional tour and coming to Blackpool's Norbreck Castle this Saturday (December 22).

But Manchester-born Emmie is no stranger to the town. "I love Blackpool, I absolutely adore it! I have been to Blackpool since I was about four years old to see the Lights every year," she said.

And nights out in the town as a teenager helped sow the seeds of her current career.

"I started going out with my best friend and her older sister to Sequins and other clubs. My interest in dance music definitely stemmed from there and I grew up on the new wave of dance music that was coming out then."

But her love of music began much earlier. "I think it's because my mum never let me have the TV on when I was little, so I used to love creating stuff," she laughed.

"I love writing, poetry and art, and music was a big part of our family when I was little. My dad had a folk club and music surrounded me all the time."

She had her first taste of the pop industry at a Nottingham hotel. "I was in my first year of university at Derby and some friends came over and they were staying in Nottingham. There was karaoke on at the hotel and we were up singing and this American lady approached me and asked me if I would like to be in her band."

That lady turned out to be the manager of the now-famous Backstreet Boys, and one week later Emmie had left her studies and was jetting off to America to join an all-girl band called Solid Harmony.

"It was a great experience to have, but I was thrown in with three other girls that I would not choose as friends usually and I was the youngest as well. And it was very regimented but at the time I wanted to be out partying."

So six months later Emmie cut her losses and returned to Manchester, writing her own material and enrolling on a fashion degree. Then, to her great delight and surprise her single More Than This, recorded with Mercury Records, stormed into the charts at No 5 in February last year.

Since then, she has finished her degree, signed a new deal with Telstar Records and is looking forward to the release of her new single I Won't Let You Down in February.

But Emmie is adamant that her music, not a manufactured image, will always come first. "I would rather be moderately successful and relatively sane, than worked to death like some bands." She laughed: "This popstar lifestyle is such a nightmare!"