Worldwide stardom beckons Amy Macdonald, whose debut album, This is the Life (Decca/Mercury), a collection of rolling troubadorian melodies laced with a touch of the gothic, has already sold over a million copies in Europe. Unlike another famous Brit bird named Amy, or even Macdonald’s fallen idol Pete Doherty, about whom she penned the lambasting track “Poison Prince” (layered with accusatory lines like: “You’ve given up, you’ve given in/ Another sucker of that slime”), Macdonald is not letting angst rule her life. Fresh from a Caribbean holiday and newly engaged, she is greeting the press in New York, and excited about seeing her idol -- Bruce Springsteen -- perform across the river in his home state. “It’s cool that things get started over here,” she says.

With her gorgeous Dolores O’Riordanesque smoky vocals, Macdonald infuses rock fantasies like “Let’s Start a Band” and the title track of the 11-song disc with irony and cool swagger. “Youth of Today” is Macdonald’s “My Generation”: “You’re just some incapable figger thinking you’re bigger than me,” she sings, calmly defiant. A Christina Ricci look-alike with a china doll face, pale blue eyes and mane of dark straight hair, Macdonald says she wrote the song at the age of 15, when a store clerk tried to bust her for opening paint cans. “He was some old man who did not like young people,” she explains today, some satisfaction evident at getting in the last word.