SOUND OUT I don’t know how many songs I’ve written... I’ve been performing for 46 years

You have had many hits over the years like Me Myself I and Love And Affection. Have they become part of people’s lives? THAT’S the great thing about being a songwriter, people will say ‘Oh, we used your song at a very sad time, somebody died, it was their favourite song, we had to have it with them at the funeral.’ You can’t get a bigger compliment than that.

You get ‘We named our child after one of your songs.’ There’s a lot of Rosies and Willows out there! ‘We got married to that song, we met through that song, we went to a concert and we were both so into your music and we hooked up...’

I get all kinds of stories, all around these things that I’ve written. It’s the best feeling, I absolutely love it. And I do meet these people, because they want tell me that ‘I’m named because of your song,’ so I’ve met quite a few of them which is lovely. have had such a great ride and if I didn’t have new people coming along it wouldn’t sustain. People do die and people’s tastes change.

Some might think ‘Oh, Joan was wonderful when she was 26 but now she’s 67, I don’t think so’. That can happen, so you can lose people like that or because they’ve just moved, or they’ve had children and their focus is on something totally different.

You need the loyal fans, and I’m happy to say I have some very loyal fans. And I love doing live shows because there’s always such a great mix of people. I’m very lucky. PRETTY much, yes. I wrote everything, recorded, engineered, programmed the drums, I’m playing everything, I arranged everything, I wrote and arranged all the strings and, yes, sang it all, did everything.

But that’s just because I can, and I love to do it, and it’s what I want to do. I’ve always done it. But when it comes to the mixing then I always work with a mixing engineer because I would never want to go through that whole process completely on my own, I think that would be not healthy. You need some other ears, you know. IT’S positive. I’m a positive person. In all my songs the words are pretty much positive and the music is always up. The music is always something that I think will try and make you smile. ONE of my favourites, actually they’re all my favourites, is the piano song, Always In My Dreams.

I love reading problem pages and there’s always somebody saying ‘Oh, I really fancy this guy, or I really fancy this girl, and I don’t know how to approach them, and I’ve said to my friends, this is the person I need to marry...’ But they’re never saying it to that person, and the advice quite often is, just pluck up the courage and talk to that person.

And this song is kind of the same thing – if you have somebody you really want to connect with, you can’t really afford to mess about, you’ve just got to get on with it. ABSOLUTELY, I look forward to playing Love And Affection. I would never dream of doing a concert where I didn’t play Love And Affection. Why would I? That’s the song that got me known. So I can sing Love and Affection, Me Myself I, Drop The Pilot, Willow, Rosie, all the songs, and I’ll still have time to do all the new album!

JOAN Armatrading’s new album Not Too Far Away is out now on BMG and will be followed by a UK tour in September. For details go to joanarmatrading.com