SOPHIE B. HAWKINS : As Sexy as She Wants to Be

Out on her first tour, Sophie B. Hawkins is running into a curious phenomenon, at least for a heralded singer of some sophistication whose appeal would seem as much cerebral as sexual: the age-old garment-tossing ritual.

“In a way, the fact that boys in the audience now are throwing their T-shirts and their old jeans on stage (is) the most sexy thing to me,” she says, “because they’re realizing that I love to dress in my boyfriend’s T-shirts or my brother’s jeans. And they find that very intimate, I think.”

Not to mention what may be the obvious: Damn, they wish she was their lover.

In its confessional impressionism, Hawkins’ debut album, “Tongues and Tails,” probably veers closer to Laura Nyro’s native soil than Madonna country. It’s as much the stuff of critical acclaim as of the Top 10, where her first single, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” landed earlier this year.

Yet, if she’s no dance diva, certain comparisons may be inevitable just from the sheer sensuality Hawkins imparts in every song, even the obviously non-sexual ones. And, with the kind of striking yet eccentric good looks that photographers adore, she’s clearly not camera shy.

The twentysomething New Yorker doesn’t balk in the slightest at her apparent impending enshrinement as an icon.

“If that happens, it’ll be in the right time and won’t be anything that’s against my nature,” she says. “Even Marilyn Monroe said, ‘Sexuality is spontaneity.’ People who really try, it’s not sexy.

“I think that people are already calling me a sex symbol because there’s no way that I would even ever have to try at it, you know what I mean? The thing that makes me sexy, I think, is that intimately, one on one, I have my own vision, and I’m not falling into a pattern of what women should be or are meant to be. And that’s a relief.”

She has played or sung jazz and gospel and is versed in the African and Brazilian rhythms that show up as undercurrents on her album. Hawkins (who plays the Roxy on Sept. 10-11 and the Coach House on Sept. 14) claims Streisand as an influence but deifies the Stones as the ultimate aphrodisiac in her hit single.

“I don’t think I’ve ever sung about unrequited love in my life,” she says. “Different things motivate people, and pain and depression don’t really motivate me--although I feel them a lot, like anybody else. But usually when I’ve come through those dark areas, and I’m really on my way to being able to give and receive real love with people, that’s when I start to write.

“To me ‘Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,’ is almost like an anthem, like ‘Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee’; it could be my version of a really beautiful gospel, about how relationships to me are really the beginning and the end of everything.”