Ketevan "Katie" Melua is a Georgian and British singer and songwriter. Melua was born in Kutaisi and raised in Belfast and London. Under the management of composer Mike Batt, she was signed to the small Dramatico record label. She made her musical debut in 2003 and within three years, she was the United Kingdom's best-selling female artist as well as Europe's highest selling European female artist.
"If You Were a Sailboat" was written and produced by Mike Batt and was Melua's ninth single and the first from her third album, Pictures (2007). Melua said of the song:
What I liked about the song is the fact that a lot of love songs tend to deal with the fluffy nice side of love, but this one deals with how you get very selfish when you fall in love with someone, and you don't want to share them with the world, you just want them all about yourself. What's genius about Mike's lyrics is that instead of saying that directly he uses these crazy strange metaphors, "if you were a piece of wood I'd nail you to the floor" and quite bizarre stuff and I like that. Musically it sounds like a really nice smooth love song, but the message is pretty intense and quite dark.
