A skinny guy and his girlfriend, flannel and fedora clad, are gazing at Ingrid Michaelson. The boy kisses the girl's collarbone as she mouths the words along with the singer-songwriter. The two look at Michaelson as if she is the only one who can understand what their relationship means; as if she has successfully encapsulated love in a few chords.
"It's like you have this ball of yarn and then suddenly it's a hat or a scarf and you've made a beautiful thing: a song," Michaelson said a few hours before taking the stage Thursday night in Solana Beach to help kick off the Hotel Cafe Tour. She is 28 and was wearing a clingy gray T-shirt with three dinosaurs printed on it. She had on a pair of clunky leather boots. Her hair is amber-colored and parted down the middle.
"I like to use the heaviest parts of words when I write," she said, peering through her signature red-rimmed oval glasses. "That way, they can be memorable when there are just a few of them."
Seemingly, it hasn't just been this one couple in the audience who have been clinging to Michaelson's words. More than 25 million "Grey's Anatomy" viewers heard her song "Keep Breathing" during the ABC series' final episode of last season. In fact, television has been one of the major components in propelling Michaelson toward burgeoning indie-pop stardom. The placement of her first single, "The Way I Am," in Old Navy's Fair Isle sweater commercial in December prompted viewers to Google Michaelson's lyrics, in turn pushing her into the top ranks of the iTunes charts.
Michaelson, whose self-produced album "Girls and Boys" has sold more than 160,000 copies in the U.S. to date, is at the front of a parade of musicians who are combating a changing music industry head-on with the help of broader commercial technology.
But it was just last May that Michaelson was spending her days making fairy wings out of old curtains for her job as the director of a city-funded after-school children's theater program in Staten Island, N.Y., where she lived with her parents.
"If I'd had to make sparkled leotards and laugh with 14-year-olds for the rest of my life, it would have been very sweet and safe and fine," said Michaelson. "Music isn't a safe job at all. I'm very fearful of everything crashing to an end."
The worry is understandable coming from a woman who is familiar with sudden, confusing kinds of miracles, the first occurring when a few staffers at L.A.-based music licensing and artist management company Secret Road stumbled upon Michaelson's MySpace page, fell in love with her music and asked if they could sign her.
