I want to annoy. And I'm going to enjoy it!" is the provocative opening line of Caesar, the catchy debut single from I Blame Coco. It's quite an introduction to the musical alter ego of Eliot Pauline Sumner, aka Coco, daughter of Sting (Gordon Sumner) and Trudi Styler. Just 19 years old, Coco Sumner turns up for her interview on a wet, winter's morning wearing T-shirt, shorts and hiking boots. "I never get cold," she sniffs, unconvincingly. Tangly, pre-Raphaelite locks of unwashed-looking hair hang around her face, so that she appears to be talking through a shaggy curtain. Her voice is low and gravelly; her most overused phrase, "uhm, yeah".
A geek
She curls up on a couch, with a paperback of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with which she says, she is persevering even though she's not actually enjoying it. "He's so dogmatic. I'm not sure if it makes me really angry or it makes me laugh." She keeps rubbing her eyes and yawning, as if she is having difficulty waking. Well, it's only 11 o'clock. "I went to bed really early last night," she apologises. "I think I'm suffering from too much sleep."
Coco couldn't be any more teenage if Harry Enfield's scriptwriters had dreamt her up. She has that whole autistic adolescent thing going on, where you imagine her holing up in her bedroom for days on end, reading philosophy, fiddling with her computer and playing electric guitar and drums, very loud. Which, I gather, is not far from the truth. "I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to music," she says, with a shrug. "I like studio gear. I'm always looking it up on eBay and seeing what I can afford."
But somehow I don't think her parents have anything to worry about. For one thing, most teenagers don't emerge from hibernation clutching a smart, funny, sonically bold debut album on which they have written all the songs and played all the instruments themselves. And, let's face it, it could have been so much worse, especially when you consider the behaviour of other pop offspring on the party circuit. "I'm not in this for money or fame," insists Coco, who has a fiercely focused seriousness about her. "I'm purely in it 'cos I love making music.
"There's a perception of fame at the moment, where you're a celebrity and you go to celebrity parties and you drink champagne with other celebrities, and that makes you even more famous, but you get no respect. Which is why I never go to those awful parties. I'm hoping that I can avoid that side of fame. But it's kind of freaking me out, to be honest. I'm a little bit terrified."
Having grown up with a superstar father, you might have thought Coco would be blase about the pop world. Quite the opposite, apparently. "I know what the bad things are," she says. "You're taken out of your comfort zone, where you have your walls and friends and everyone around who you've grown up with, and suddenly you're kind of pushed out and everyone wants to know you, and that takes a while to get used to. But if you let yourself get used to it, you become a different person. But maybe I'm over-thinking it. I'll be all right. I keep myself to myself. I'll stay out of trouble."
Coco was offered a deal by Island at 17, and you can see what the record company were thinking: she is beautiful, she's talented, she's Sting's daughter. She sounds a lot like him when she sings, her husky low female voice occupying a similar tone and register to dad's husky, high male voice. And though her brash, contemporary music is broadly different from his, her forthcoming debut album, The Constant, does exhibit a Sting-like taste for lyrical, philosophical and melodically accessible pop, albeit amped up with teenage energy.
Bravura confidence
She has been playing instruments since a very young age, is adept at piano, guitar, bass and drums, and started writing songs in her mid-teens. Although you would never guess from the bravura confidence of her music or lively stage presence, in person Coco is actually quite introverted. "It stresses me out writing songs, I get really super nervous and speedy, I feel like I'm possessed. But it's my only way of really expressing myself, 'cos I'm rubbish in social situations. I'm very shy and awkward, I can't have a normal conversation, and then people think I'm being a bit rude, but really I'm not. Music gives me strength to come out of my shell a bit."
Daddy's girl? not quite
Coco Sumner is clearly not comfortable talking about her family connections, but it's hard to avoid them. One of her early songs was titled My Name Is A Stain and contains the line "forget my dad, you need to hear my band"."I never wanted to be another kid following in their parents' footsteps," she says, "but yes, my dad is proud. He's my dad. But he's doing his thing, and I'm doing my thing, and there is no comparison, really, even if we're in the same, uhm, line of work."
