Michelle Branch Announces That She's Returning To Pop Music

Michelle Branch has announced that her new album will mark a return to her pop roots that she started with before her move to country with The Wreckers.

The singer, whose last studio release was a country record as part of the Wreckers, said that she has been writing a "fun" and "creative" LP in the vein of her debut The Spirit Room in London with producers Jim Irvin and Julian Emrey.

In a Ustream chat, she said: "I was in London - I've been working on a new record Julian Emrey and Jim Irvine, who are these two writers I met in LA. The first song we wrote together is a song called 'Spark', and we were so excited about it - it was the best writing day possible! "It's great because they're writers and also producers. My favorite song that we wrote together was called 'The Story Of Us'. It's a song that's really personal to me. I have 11 or 12 songs ready to go right now and I'm going to go in studio in January and start recording them. I'm really confident I will have this record out by next summer. I hate putting labels on it because a good song is a good song. This record is more in the vein of my first record, which I would say was a pop record. The last record became so exhausting that this one is all about having fun and being creative again and not feeling like I have to write a specific way for a specific genre."