"I don't really know how to describe my music," said Jones. "It's not really a jazz record. We're getting further and further away from jazz than when we started because I used to sing all jazz standards and be really into that. We just keep getting into other things. I've gotten really into country music this year. ... I think my record is just a collection of songs and ... hopefully people like it."

Jones' CD has received almost unanimous critical praise and her performance on AUSTIN CITY LIMITS filled the legendary television studio with a mellow groove that sent fans home smiling. Jones' performance includes "Nightingale," "Come Away with Me," "Feelin' the Same Way," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "I've Got to See You Again," "Lone Star" and "Bessie
Smith."

Jones, who is in her early twenties, said she did not expect her first album to be as popular - both critically and commercially - as it is.

"Sometimes I feel like I don't know what I did to deserve all this," Jones said. "I've been really lucky. I just hope I can handle it. ... There's a lot of young people out there who would like the same opportunity. ... [I fell like] I reached a goal that I thought was like a twenty year goal."

Here is my review of Jones' Come Away With Me:

You would never guess Norah Jones' age from her voice: a melodious alto blend of Billie Holiday compression (she fills the notes like ideal air pressure in a tire), Diana Krall easy self-possession, and a hint of smoky Dusty-in-Memphis grit.

I first heard the voice last year on the brilliant 8-string guitarist Charlie Hunter's Songs From the Analog Playground, on which she appeared twice: a dazzling, bluesy rendition of Nick Drake's "Day Is Done"; and most remarkably, a jazzy bossa nova version of Roxy Music's ode to ennui, "More Than This," on which she brought to mind an idealized Phoebe Snow.

Then her CD, Come Away With Me, came out and I knew they had put the wrong person on the cover: big trouble in the art department. For staring out from the jewel case is a vaguely exotic, raven-haired, sensuous-lipped, college girl. There is no way that this voice of sly experience came out of that face. But it did, and does.

Though released by the historic, jazz-oriented Blue Note label, Come Away, produced by the legendary Arif Mardin is an unlikely but cohesive admixture of easy jazz, sophisto-pop, smooth soul, and countryish L.A. singer-songwriter stylings. No ragas, though (more on that later), and not one moment of diva-like histrionics, not a whiff of Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera begging you to hear ME ME ME above and beyond the SONG SONG SONG, which for them is just a vehicle for the real star of the show.

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