North star

Lisa Stansfield still lives in Rochdale where she grew up, but singing has taken her All Around the World a few times and to her other homes in London, New York and LA. ‘I’ll keep doing it till you chuck me out’ she tells Janet Christie of her new album a

Lisa Stansfield talks to Janet Christie about her new album and tour

You could listen to Lisa Stansfield all day. And that’s without her breaking into song. Never mind the soaring voice that’s put the heart into British soul for decades, it’s her brilliant Rochdale accent, vowels as flat as a cap with houndstooth consonants and dark flecks of profanity that make her someone you just want to hear.

“Hi, it’s Lisa. I’m sorreh am leeeeeyt. It’s the weather, it just f **** everything up, doesn’t it?,” she says down the line from the Lancashire mill town, where she’s been recording her new album, out this week. “It’s nice though – if you’re indoors. It’s so bee-yoo-tee-full, the snaw!”

Chatty and cheerful, polite and personable, her voice swooping down low then whooping up high, with the percussion of an infectious, raucous laugh that sounds like the Encyclopedia Britannica being dropped down a wooden staircase, it’s not just what she says, but how she says it. Singer is sin-g-er, birthday is buthday, weird is wee-yurrd and autobiography has more syllables than Rochdale once had mills. When she sings, it’s a different voice altogether, a soul sound that spans the Atlantic and goes All Around the

World in influence and inspiration. “My mum was always playing Motown in the house and Diana Ross and Barry White, they were my teachers. I have this accent because I emulated my mum and dad, then when I started singing, you copy singers and it becomes your voice. Your voice with lots of different people thrown in. Sometimes you’ll do an ad lib and it’s oh my god, that felt a little bit like Prince, or Gladys Knight. It’s really nice, like having friends in on your singing.”

Back from walking the dogs in the snow, Stansfield is full of the joys, despite the cold. Slight and slim, in appearance she’s changed little over the years – elfin features and cropped dark hair often topped off by a variety of hats, from beret to beanie, her diminutive stature the opposite of her music industry status. She’s been at the top since 1989 when she burst onto the scene with no 1 hit All Around

the World, followed by a string of international top ten hits including

Change, All Woman and Someday. In her three decade career she’s sold almost 20 million records and won a shedload of awards including Brits, Ivor Novello, Billboard Music and Silver Clefs. She could be forgiven, at 52 this month, for sitting back and putting her feet up, but music is what Stansfield does, and her eighth studio album release also kicks off another UK tour, that takes in Edinburgh next month. Stansfield is hoping

Deeper will repeat the success of her