Norah Jones.

Norah Jones' soothing music -- an amalgamation of jazz, blues, country and folk -- may have been on in the background during more than a few candelit dinners, marriage proposals and even some baby-making.

But surprisingly, the New York-based singer-songwriter-pianist -- whose first two albums collectively sold 30 million worldwide while she picked up eight Grammys -- says she's not a romantic.

"For me, I really love music because it can make me laugh, it can make me cry, it can make me dance, it just makes you feel something," said Jones, 27, in a Toronto hotel room yesterday to promote her just-released third album, Not Too Late.

"And if that does it for anyone, if it makes them feel sad or it makes them feel romantic, that's fine. It doesn't matter that I'm not a romantic person, not personally, but there must be some side of me that is to make music like that."

Still, as an outlet to just be silly, Jones has been known to don a platinum wig and play guitar in a goofy glam-rock band named El Madmo who have infrequent gigs in New York. Their song titles include Vampire Guy and Head In A Vise.

"The purpose of it is that we wrote a bunch of songs on tour for this band and we decided to do some gigs with it," said Jones, who'll perform and answer questions live on CITY-TV's Breakfast Television today between 6-9 a.m.

"I mean the purpose of music is enjoyment. We started writing these silly songs for that band and they're very, very different from the kind of stuff I usually do, and they're really fun and we knew it was just for us. And I know that it kind of helped open up my writing path. So doing stuff like that is good for you. It gets you out of your head and into something different and then it opens you up creatively to different things."

To wit, Not Too Late found Jones co-writing all 13 songs for the first time while her boyfriend, bassist Lee Alexander, produced the record.

The late Arif Mardin was behind the boards for the first two records.

Significantly, the new disc sees Jones getting political on the song, My Dear Country, in which she says of George W. Bush, "who knows maybe he's not deranged."

"Hey man, he's welcome to prove it," said Jones with a laugh. "I mean the song is really about hoping things are going to be okay. It just came out one night. It was around election time, 2004."

And, no, Jones isn't afraid of getting "Dixie Chicked" because of it.

"I think that song is more of a personal song than a political song," said Jones, whose only Canadian dates so far will be Toronto's Massey Hall May 11 and Montreal's Theatre St. Denis May 12, according to livedaily.com. "It's about being frustrated with the system. It's not necessarily trying to bash anyone. But I also think the Dixie Chicks kind of took the brunt of the Dixie-Chickie-ing. They kind of cleared the way. I also think that I'm at the point, I'm at the age and I have the beliefs I have and what's the big deal?"

She's now the reel deal

Norah Jones is making the move from music to movies. And in a starring role, no less, opposite Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman in Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai's first English-language film, My Blueberry Nights.

'I'm the main character, it's wacky," said Jones, who still has another week of filming to do on the movie next month.

"I play a girl who's very sad and romantic. My character's a little bit lost and she takes this trip from New York across the country. It's kind of a nice little homage to great classic road movies in the United States."

Kar-Wai approached Jones and she initially thought he wanted music for the soundtrack. "He asked if I wanted to be in a movie and I thought, 'Well, okay.' I said, 'Well, I don't know if I can act.' He said, 'Oh, it doesn't matter. Let's do it!' So I think I was at a point where I just finished the tour for the second record and I had no plans and I was excited to try something different."

And while she was initially intimidated, it was mainly Law who was the problem.

"I was the most nervous the first few days with Jude Law because he's a man, and a handsome man and he's the one you see in all the magazines.

"But everyone was nice and great actors, all of them, and made me feel very comfortable."