Their new single, “Dance, Dance”, is at No 8 in the UK chart this week, and they are NME cover stars And Fall Out Boy are heading to Britain next month. Their second album, From Under the Cork Tree, released a year ago, is nearing triple-platinum status and has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the US alone. For angst-ridden American teenagers, they are the gods of America’s newest punk-pop revolution. They have some of the longest song titles in pop history – “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued” and “I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written about Me”.

You want them to be proud of you.”Thompson insists he simply hopes for enough success to keep him touring and recording. But he allows himself a bigger dream: “I like to think that, if I do something well, at least better than most pop musicians,” he says, “it’s that I can write good songs. When my singing voice is gone, I’d like to be remembered for my songs.”He allows himself a weary but proud smile “Yeah. I’d like to be thought of as a really good songwriter.”The single ‘I Should Get Up’ is out on Verve on 8 May Teddy Thompson is touring to 14 May. Coming from the family I do, that would not be a good thing: I don’t think my parents would be particularly impressed if I was in a boy band.

I’d rather hold up my Mojo review and sell two records, than sell a million records and have terrible reviews. “I know it doesn’t mean much in the whole scheme of things, but getting good reviews on something that you’ve worked really hard on means the world to me And I feel already genuinely successful because of that. “Sometimes the situations I write about are just so ridiculous,” he laughs “Like in ‘I Wish It Was Over’, for example. If you’re with someone you don’t want to be with, in the end whose fault is that? Like most things, it’s all mine.”He has been bowled over by the glowing reviews his new album has received in the UK “People really like it here,” he says, a little overwhelmed.