If you saw Sandi Thom snuggled up on a couch with her bare feet tucked beneath her, you would never guess that the 25-year-old singer/songwriter had recently been caught up in a whirlwind of controversy that found her gaining both fans and foes at lightning speed. Only a slight wariness in her eyes gives any hint to the tremendous highs and lows this woman has come to know in her young life.

     After all, it was only back in early months of 2006 that the Scotland born and raised Alexandria "Sandi" Thom was a struggling singer with an old broken-down car and another small-peanuts gig to get to. Then an idea came to her. Instead of traveling around the U.K. countryside, she would stay at home and webcast a series of concerts, a cyber tour if you like, directly from her basement in Tooting.

     Word quickly traveled throughout the online community and the 21 concerts known as the 21 Nights From Tooting were such an enormous success that tens of thousands of viewers tuned in by the end of the "tour" from places as far flung as Russia and New Zealand. Less than two weeks after the cyber shows concluded, Thom signed a record contract for five albums with the RCA Label Group in the very same basement—via webcam, of course.

     It was in part because of this meteoric rag-to-riches rise that the buzzing began. Blogs and chatrooms caught fire as questions were raised about the authenticity of Sandi Thom as an overnight superstar. The singer had already scored a publishing deal prior to her webcasts and did have the help of Quite Great P.R. firm to spread the word about her cyber shows. Bloggers also challenged the claim from Thom’s camp that 70,000 people viewed the online tour.

     The negative talk, while downright nasty at times, hasn’t derailed the spunky singer’s quest for musical stardom in any way. She went on to record her major label debut, %Smile … It Confuses People% (BMG/RCA), which shot up the U.K. charts, reaching No. 1. The album’s first single, "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)," also reached the same lofty heights. If someone is having the last laugh here, it has to be Sandi Thom.

     With her album set for a September 12 release in the U.S. via Columbia Records, Thom is working overtime to introduce her music to a new audience while tuning out the music bloggers back home. Just how does a relative newcomer to the music scene deal with the backlash that is almost inevitable when you dare to be young, successful and driven all at the same time? While it obviously wasn’t Thom’s favorite topic of conversation, she was good-natured enough to answer with a surprising amount of candor.

     "That kind of thing will always go on, whether it’s in the paper or on the Internet or wherever, and I think it’s horrible, really," she sighs. "The thing is you can’t please all of these people all of the time, but when the vast majority of the people out there do like you and appreciate your music, it’s kind of enough."

     This newfound maturity is not completely surprising coming from an artist who seems to be an old soul anyway. Just take her single "Punk Rocker," where Thom eschews all forms of technical wizardry in favor of singing a cappella. Her lyrics also tend to give some pause. Sandi Thom is one of the Internet music revolution’s first superstars, but her hit tune pays fawning tribute to the hippies of the 1960s and the punks of the 1970s.