Pop sure makes a racket these days: Metal boys working their kerrang, hip-hop crews bringing the noise, teen sensations with their flash and splash concert antics. Perhaps relatively calm newcomer Norah Jones is thriving because her music takes things in stride. There's passion on her gorgeous debut, Come Away With Me. But Jones is judicious about its use, creating a great sense of cool. Know how a full-grown willow sounds when it opens its arms to a June breeze? Come Away With Me is kin to that.

The 22-year-old Jones has been impressing New York club goers for a few years now, and when the folks from the jazz label Blue Note signed her, they were hearing some swing in her work. They heard correctly. But Jones isn't your typical jazz chanteuse. Without the slightest wrinkle, she's captured listeners way outside jazz. Guess that's what happens when you give Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart" a cowboy bounce and a blues vocal.

Raised outside of Dallas, Jones fell for Billie Holiday as a kid, showed interest in jazz during high school and studied its intricacies in college. During the summer of 1999, she hit New York, staying in a pal's sublet, and began playing restaurant and club gigs in Greenwich Village and Soho. As a pianist, she can wind her way through several bop lines. But for Come Away With Me she's reduced that bold expressionism to a few choice trills.

Produced by veteran soundscapist Arif Mardin and hip newcomer Craig Street, the disc is proud of its sultry side. And at its center is Jones' voice. Sensual, carefree, forlorn, it simply wafts down from the speakers and settles on the couch next to you - like some friend who showed up out of nowhere. Exhale, everybody, exhale. Put a little willow in your life.

VH1: How's your brain?

Norah Jones: Pretty fried, but I'll be okay.

VH1: What's this about you going full tilt in Denver? You sang "Que Sera Sera" with Medeski, Martin & Wood?

Jones: That was fun! I've been listening to them since college days. They invited me to sing with them and I was nervous.

VH1: That doesn't necessarily seem like the character of your record.

Jones: I'm definitely shy and I usually freak out about stuff like that, but I didn't that night. Think I was too tired to freak. I sang without a piano, just a mic, which is weird. Without a piano I don't know how to stand, don't know what to do with my hands. I was kind of nerdy. It was a very last minute thing, and that's the only song that we all knew. The Sly version is so amazing.

VH1: I forgot about the Sly spin.

Jones: Yeah, you were thinking Doris Day, right? We did the Sly arrangement...kind of.

VH1: Seems like this late date modern singers have to have a real song library in their head to be hip. Did you go through a show tune phase growing up?

Jones: I was really into Cats when I was seven. And then Phantom of the Opera, and then that was the end of it. I memorized both of those shows. People talk shit about that stuff, but it's fun. West Side Story was my favorite movie until I was about 10 - I never told anyone that. [Singing] "When yaw a Jet yaw a Jet awl the way/from yaw first cigarette to yaw last dying day. Da da dot da da." I didn't like the mushy ÔMaria' songs; I fast forwarded over the love scenes and went to the gang scenes.

VH1: A tough girl, eh?

Jones: Yeah, if you knew me just from my record, you wouldn't think that, right? You'd think I was a little pansy. That's like when I was with Charlie Hunter. We did mellow tunes on the record, and then on stage we did [uptempo] Stevie Wonder songs, and other stuff. And some people got into me through that.

VH1: So are there two Norahs?

Jones: Well, not really. There used to be, maybe. I'd do my jazz gigs. And then go do gigs with Wax Poetic, another band I sang with that was really loud. Somewhere along the line the two Norahs melted into one. I don't try to sound like anyone but me anymore. If something is out of my element, I try to avoid it. If someone wants me to sit in, but I think I'm going to sound stupid with them, I won't. It's not worth it. I'll try and get out of it somehow.

VH1: Some teenagers hang around on the couch all day. You've been on a semi professional track for a while now. You knew you wanted to be a performer. Is the record how you thought you'd sound back in those days? Did you fulfill your perceived artistic persona?

Jones: It's kind of weird, because I'm not really like the personality that emerges from the record. I'm not melancholy; I'm a happy-go-lucky person, kind of silly. I like funny things. I have a lot of energy. I tend to like music that's mellow, though.

VH1: So are musical nuances more powerful - in an emotional sense - than volume?

Jones: It depends. For me they are. But that's because I'm not Whitney Houston. And I'm not going to try to be. My record is a lot more mellow than I intended it to be. The way I sing on it is quieter than I intended. Part of the reason was being new at recording, and part was trying not to be the way pop music is today - and maybe overcompensating by undersinging.

VH1: Some journalists have said that the disc's singularity comes from the fact that it has the audacity to be low key in a splashy pop era.

Jones: It's kind of like sensory overload. I can't sing like that. Some girls can sing that well. A lot of pop people out there are cool, but they over do it.

VH1: Even though you don't want to sing it yourself, are you a fan of that kind of thing? Do you own a Britney Spears album?

Jones: No, I'm a fan of Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder. No, I don't own that kind of stuff. I like to watch it on TV if it comes on. It's definitely stimulating.

VH1: Name a Stevie song that slays you.

Jones: Oh god, which album? There are so many. The first one that comes to mind is "Happier Than the Morning Sun." But that's one of the quiet, beautiful ones. There are also the ones that kick ass, that are so ballsy - sorry I'm a potty mouth today. Songs In the Key of Life has several of those.

VH1: Did Arif Mardin regale you with tales of the other singers he's worked with? Did he draw any parallels between you and someone else?

Jones: Not really. One time I did do a little turn in one of the songs and he said, "ohh, sounds like a young Aretha Franklin." I almost peed in my pants. Whatever!

VH1: What did you actually learn about music in college? Did it help you for this current experience?

Jones: It was cool. I'm glad I didn't go all four years, because I would have burnt out a bit. I did jazz gigs around [the town]. In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That's where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing.

VH1: Did you want to strangle them sometime for not listening?

Jones: Actually no, because I knew what to expect. And actually, you know what? There were some people listening. There was always that moment where someone would say, "Know what? You sound great. Could you put me on your mailing list?"

VH1: Was there a touchstone song that could make people swoon?

Jones: I was doing all jazz standards. And they'd all get some reaction. All the older people would say "How does a girl like you know all those old songs?"

VH1: Name a standard you'll never get tired of.

Jones: "Come Rain or Come Shine" - I love that song when it's done slow and bluesy, not fast. But some jazz musicians are tired of that. They do it on too many gigs. There are jazz singer songs that are done to death, like "Route 66."

VH1: And now the opposite. Which of those songs do you never want to hear again?

Jones: Probably "The Song is You," which is a beautiful song, but it got overplayed. There are people who hate tunes they heard too much in music school, and that's one of them.

VH1: How did you know it was cool to go far afield and do Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart" on the record?

Jones: Well, it's a good song. And Dinah Washington sang it, so you can't give me the "Well, that's not a jazz song." Whatever. A good song is a good song. I knew Hank Williams songs were well known, but I didn't know how many people would comment on it.

VH1: Has it turned into a field day for people suggesting oddball tunes for record number two? Maybe "Que Sera Sera" is nextÉ

Jones: No, no, no. I don't think so.

Watch Norah Jones perform "Nightingale" live at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.