CONSIDERING the motto “The show must go on”, there’s something pleasingly refreshing about an artist backing away from it all to simply put their feet up.

When Lisa Stansfield released her debut album Affection in 1989, it went on to sell more than five million copies and spawned the single All Around World, a No 1 smash, well, all around the world.

The success carried on throughout the Nineties – gold discs, top five singles and albums, sell-out tours and even a burgeoning acting career.

As the 21st Century began, however, Stansfield’s career started to slow, and by the time she released her 2004 album The Moment, she couldn’t break the Top 40 (it peaked in the UK at No 57). With that, Stansfield and her musical partner-turned-husband Ian Devaney decided to take a break.

“I didn’t think anyone was going to listen to what I had to say, so why bother?” she says, quite sensibly.

She and Devaney were writing most of the time, either at their home in Rochdale, where she has a studio called Gracielands, in honour of the town’s fellow singer and actress Gracie Fields, or at their other house in London’s Hampstead.

“I always had the material, I just didn’t think I fitted into anything that was happening in music,” she says, going on to explain how she believes all art to be cyclical, and if you wait long enough, everything comes back around eventually.

The first time she noticed the charts might once again favour the sort of emotional, modern soul songs she’d always specialised in, was when Amy Winehouse released Back To Black.

Then in her wake came Adele, and more recently Emeli Sande. For Stansfield, that was enough. “I thought, ‘If I don’t do it now, I never will’, so I started getting ready to release the album.”

The album in question is Seven – it’s her seventh – and it was released in January. It soon went to No 13 in the album chart, proving her theory right.

“This is the best album I’ve ever made, so I didn’t want to put it out when no one was listening,” she says.

“I was hoping the change in musical taste would mean I could get a foot in the door, but I was quite prepared to not bother, too.”

In the ten years Stansfield’s been away, she says that not much has changed, and music fans still want good music. Of course, the ways in which people listen to and get hold of that music have shifted dramatically, but she believes that – as she releases her music independently – is only a good thing.

“There’s less influence from big corporate business. There’s The X Factor and the big labels and things, but that’s TV. The changes in technology and social media have given people like me the opportunity to self-promote.

“Maybe no one’s making as much money as they used to, but artists are getting in front of more people than ever.”

While the comeback has been successful Stansfield will never be able to escape the earlier part of her career.

“People come up to me and sing, ‘Been around the world and I-I-I-I...’ to me, all the time,” she says. “It’s really funny because I’ve got an album out again and it’s on my mind.

“When someone says, ‘Hiya Lisa, I love your record’, I think they mean the new one and it’s lovely, but then it turns out they mean All Around The World and I think, ‘I can’t shake it off ’.”

  • Lisa Stansfield’s album Seven is out now. She begins a UK tour on September 5, including The Sage Gateshead on September 6 and York Barbican on September 12.