NEW YORK, Feb 24: Newcomer Norah Jones blew away the competition at the 45th annual Grammy awards on Sunday, taking five trophies including Album of the Year, and stealing the thunder from old-school rocker Bruce Springsteen.

Of the eight artists going into the music industry’s biggest night out with five nominations, the sultry jazz-pop vocalist was the only one to win in every category and tied Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keys for most wins by a female artist in a single evening.

Jones, 23, has some rich music industry blood as the daughter of 82-year-old Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar and longtime New York concert producer Sue Jones.

Jones rarely talks in public about her father, who is most famous in the West for his collaborations with the Beatles, especially the late George Harrison. Jones’ mother had a nine-year relationship with Shankar, towards the end of which Norah was born.

She saw her father a few times a year until she was nine, and then not until she was 18, when she was introduced to her 16-year-old half-sister Anoushka, now a Shankar-trained classical sitar player with three albums under her belt.

“Although I love my dad very much, I did only spend a fraction of my adolescence around him. This is probably why I try to downplay our relationship in the press,” she said in a recent interview.

“I love my dad, and I think he’s a brilliant musician. I just want to make my music, and I want it to stand on its own.”

As well as taking the evening’s top honour for her hugely successful debut album “Come Away With Me,” the Texas-raised New Yorker also won for Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

Her victory in the best album category was something of a surprise as the award had been talked up as a battle between Springsteen’s September 11-inspired “The Rising” and rapper Eminem’s “The Eminem Show.”—AFP