Brityn Mykhail

Like your average 14-year-old girl, Brityn Mykhail Martin text messages 100 times a day, she loves to shop with her friends and she thinks her 12-year-old brother is a pest. But unlike most of her teenage counterparts, she's a singer and songwriter. She's also recruited a manager and dropped her last name for a cooler stage name. And she's busy recording her first CD.

Brityn Mykhail Martin, make that Brityn Mykhail, is a bubbly teen with bright blue eyes and long eyelashes combed, on a recent afternoon, with an age-appropriate amount of mascara.

She's boy crazy and giggly, but she's also serious about being "a triple treat," she said.

Mykhail, who will start at Legacy High School this year, is an award-winning singer, dancer and actress.

Right now, she's focused on the music. Billed as the girl with the big voice, her manager, who doubles as a second dad/older brother-type, said she's got what it takes to be the next big thing.

"She just has it," said manager Robert Michael Sanders, who also dropped his last name for his music career.

Her voice is described on her MySpace page as "a little like Jessica Simpson, maybe some Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, JoJo, but mostly it sounds uniquely like Brityn."

Michael met the rising star in the fall during rehearsals for a local production of "Urinetown," in which they both acted and sang.

Auditions for "Urinetown" were for actors older than 18, but Mykail, 13 at the time, still auditioned and got a part.

When Michael first heard "the voice" that could carry any note and belt the older competition off the stage, he knew he had found "a gem."

"I wouldn't expect that voice to come out of that little body," he said.

Mykail, who doesn't come from a musically inclined family said, "My mom sounds like a barking dog. I have no idea where it came from. It's just a gift."

Her voice is mature enough to reach the last-row seats at the Broomfield Event Center and the Pepsi Center, where she has performed the national anthem. (She's singing the national anthem tonight at Relay For Life of Broomfield).

Her voice isn't the only thing that's mature about the 14-year-old diva. She doesn't look like a girl who just finished eighth grade and who will enter her freshman year at Legacy in August.

"Nobody thinks I'm under 16," she said.

Her manager, sitting nearby joked, "Try spending a couple hours with you."

Unlike some of her mature-looking, pretty pop-star predecessors, she doesn't want to look (or dress) too much older than her age. The church-goer and volunteer wants to be a role model to younger girls, girls who have already asked for her autograph.

"My overall goal is to be a Britney or Jessica in the fame sense," Mykhail said. "But I don't want to go down that same road."

For now, she's just doing her thing, being a teenage girl and singing (a lot) on the side. She mostly performs in the Denver-metro area as she waits for her big break.

She's hoping the launch of her CD, scheduled to be released at the end of the year, will launch her into fame — fame that wouldn't go to her head just yet. Like most of her teen friends, she's still not allowed to date and she won't be driving for another two years.

- Broomfield Enterprise