Music Features

It starts with 10,000 people (give or take a few hundred) and ends with £20,000. Anna Sinfield, who goes to Long Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, has put her name into the hat to win a talent contest which sees the cash prize go towards knocking out the winner's first ever music single. 

"It's like X-Factor for the unsigned," says Anna about Live and Unsigned.

Live and yet to be signed

Or X-Factor for the talented? "Well, everyone sounds the same, don't they?" She replies diplomatically. The same can't be said for the musicians who are trying their hand in the Live and Unsigned competition.

"There's such a wide variety of people. I was auditioning alongside another folk player and then an MC and big bands so it's very different," she says.

Hippy-dippy

The audition of which she speaks is what has seen her through to the regional finals of the contest at the Bedford Corn Exchange on Sunday 12 April, then it's the area final in the same venue and then the big one at the Portsmouth Guildhall.

Anna gets bundled into the anti-folk pigeonhole, which basically means folk for young people who wear nice clothes. It's not a criticism though, it only goes to highlight her parity with tuneful poets such as Laura Marling and Emmy the Great.

Laying down some tracks man

The formula is simple: catchy folk-pop laced with lyrics that lay down the bare bones of life and growing up. Her Cambridge education has gone some way to deciding her artistic direction.

"My previous school was a bit of a hippy school so it really encouraged music and being yourself. Long Road is quite hippy as far as colleges go but compared to St Chris (in Letchworth) it's nothing," is her assessment of how academics have moulded her music.

Wanna brew?

If bohemian schools have veered Anna towards guitars, her addiction to the humble British brew has navigated her in the direction of MySpace marketing. You can find tea themed t-shirts (should that be tea-shirts?) and the Tea Appreciation Society as one of her friends.

Miss Sinfield explains: "I've been told that I'm typically British in every way. I seem to team the accent with an obsession for tea and then I'm ginger and short and I look like I should come from the Highlands."

Great lyrics don't write themselves

Lucky I made her a cuppa when she came into the studio to record some acoustic tracks then (which you can listen to here by clicking the links).

"Everyone knows tea is the way to win my heart, which you did very successfully."

Just remember who made you tea before you hit the big-time Anna - that's right, BBC Cambridgeshire.