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Krall sings "Let's Fall in Love" on CNN's "Showbiz Today" Full audio performance: 1.2M MPEG-3 Audio clip: 273k WAV

February 1, 2000
Web posted at: 2:14 p.m. EST (1914 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- When the Grammy for best album of the year is announced on February 23, it may just be Diana Krall accepting for her nominated jazz hit, "When I Look in Your Eyes."

The chanteuse known for using strings instead of the standard jazz trio as accompaniment, is competing in the category against the Backstreet Boys' "Millennium," the Dixie Chicks' "Fly," "Supernatural" from Santana and "Fanmail" from TLC.

Though she's been nominated twice before for jazz Grammys, this nomination -- which she learned about while returning from a journey to the Antarctic -- has brought a great deal of attention to the modest Krall, who told CNN Showbiz Today's Laurin Sydney that she's doing her best to take it all in stride.

"It was quite a surprise to be nominated for album of the year," she says. "I was nominated also for female jazz vocalist. But the album of the year I think was a huge surprise to everybody, and it's a big honor to be included with Santana and different genres.

"It took a while to settle in. I was in Hawaii for a few days, and chilled and thought about it. It feels really great. I'm really excited about it."

Though the Canadian-born, Berklee College of Music-trained musician has been recording on various labels for years -- her first release, "Stepping Out," was in 1993 on the Justin Time label -- this is the first album to gain widespread notoriety. When asked why -- why this album, out of all her work, has become The Big One -- Krall says it's a hard question for her to answer. But she tries anyway.

"I think the songs are very, very good. The writing is great, you know, the American song book, great musicians, John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Russell Malone and Ben Wolf. We love music. I love what I do. I'm very passionate about what I do, and I think it's honest."

She also credits her production team. "I think I have a fantastic record producer in Tommy LiPuma, who knows how to bring out the best in artists, not to try to make them into something else. 'Just make a beautiful record and then we'll market it' is his attitude. And a great record company, and team management and all that stuff. ... I think everybody is very passionate about what we do and why we do it, because of the music."