No, despite what you might read into her lyrics, Jann Arden is not in a perpetual state of heartbreak. It turns out what you or I might interpret as cries from the soul are actually the results of watching too much CNN.

"I really don't know why I write the music I write," she says over lunch at the Soho Met hotel, promoting her new and surprisingly upbeat self-titled album. "I feel happy, I'm usually in a good place, I'm not broke and I don't have a relative dying.

"But I don't know, we live in a world that just seems so convoluted and difficult. I should stop watching CNN, but I can't seem to be able to turn it off. I'm sensitive and it makes me feel helpless -- Iraq, President Bush, endless stuff about the latest thing our own government has done. It's always something.

"And I think what happens is I just internalize it, and make it personal and it comes out as heartbreak. I mean, I'm not going to sit down and write about politics."

In fact, if Arden were to write songs about her real feelings, it might be New Age-positive (every few years she compiles personal affirmations from her website journal into books, which are gobbled up by her fans to the tune of about 25,000 each).

Or she might write songs funnier than Weird Al's on a good day. A compulsive joker, she's hosted the Montreal Just For Laughs festival Eve's Tavern female comic showcase three times. As her guitarist and drummer pass by, she introduces me saying, "This is Jim, we've spoken 111 times over the years and he still find things to ask me. 'So Jann, 12 more songs... why?'

"Leave that stuff to the Barenaked Ladies," she says about writing funny songs. "For some reason the polarity between how I am and what I write is a huge point of interest, and it's great for the fans. They come, kill themselves laughing and have a little cry over their mother."

As for the new album, how much more upbeat can you get than titles like A Perfect Day, Life Is Sweet and How Good Things Are? By contrast, there's a rerecording of an old, lovelorn Arden tune, I Would Die For You -- a duet with Sarah McLachlan.

And there's a spiritually-inclined song Calling God. "It's in all my records... Could I Be Your Girl -- "I'm ashes, I'm Jesus" -- that started with my first record. He always makes it in there. I don't know what God is, just something big and wonderful and grand that got us all here."

The poppier change in tone has already produced one top-40 hit, Where No One Knows Me, and was a deliberate approach on the part of Arden and producer Russell Bloom. "Russell and I have worked together so much now, and it was like, 'We gotta give them three solid pop songs.' And by God we sat down and that's what we did. It turns out it's not that hard to do.

"My record company's so happy, they're like 'Hal-f---in'-lujah!', they're dancing in the aisles. The single's climbing faster than Insensitive did in 1995. So I guess the old girl's still got it."

It turns out her de rigueur Canadian tour in support of the album will wait until fall, following a U.S. tour. Her best-of album Greatest Hurts is finally being released there -- three years after its Canadian debut. If the Americans discover her in a big way, it'll be a case of better late than never.

Not that she courts bigtime U.S. exposure. She seems happier with the lot of a Canadian celebrity.

"My kind of famous is like you're always running into people you know from high school. I get a lot of 'Hi Janns,' and right here on Dundas, a woman asked me if she could have a hug. I was, like, 'Yes, you can. And the nice part is I get one back.'

"I never feel apprehensive, although I know enough not to go into a mall on Saturday. I'll get groups of people following me, I'll be in Costco and people say, 'Wow Jann, you buy your own feminine protection?' I'm, like, 'Yes, I do, thank you.' "