FIRST LASS OF SOUL

LISA STANSFIELD is definitely having far more than just the last laugh these days. Indeed, she's so gleeful you could get drunk just looking at her. But why wouldn't she be? After all, Lisa is the "Lancashire Lass" who leaped from the dole queue to millionaire status so quickly that, "for ages" she says, she felt "terribly guilty" about spending large amounts of cash. She also has seen a tiny minority of critics dismiss her latest album, Lisa Stansfield, as "bland", "bloodless" even "synthetic soul" then had the sublime pleasure of sitting back and watching it enter the British album charts at number two.

Indeed, relaxing in her dressing room in RTE, Lisa lights one of her 40-a-day Benson and Hedges cigarettes and shakes her head in a way that signifies she is clearly bewildered by the sudden, surprising success of the album. And as Lisa does shake her head, that characteristic kiss-curl slips down against her cheek, effectively erasing any memory of the "ultrasophisticated" portrait, by photographer Ellen von Unwerth, which adorns the cover of Stansfield's new album. This sense is compounded by Lisa Stansfield's wonderfully earthy Lancastrian accent.

"It is amazing. I haven't had an album going in at number two since the first album!" she says. "But even if it does makes you feel great, it's also a bit worrying because it's easier to handle failure than success. You took at failure and say, `well, maybe that is where we went wrong'. But a success like this makes you go, `whhaaa! Help! What's happening?' So I am fazed by it all! My heart is still fluttering!"

Fluttering or not, when Lisa speaks of failure, it does come from the heart. Her last album, So Natural, was a flop. Relatively speaking. "Probably because the first two albums were so successful, we got a little bit smug," she suggests.

"And having moved to Dublin to do that album, we did go a little crazy socialising, for a time, living just off St Stephen's Green, going out every night! Whereas now we have the house in Dalkey a safe distance from the city centre and tend to stay in more. We also have the studio in the house, meaning we could work on this new album, on and off, for the best part of the past three years.

Before we talk about the album, let's flash back to some of the legendary tales that have delighted certain social circles in Dublin's night life since the "Lancashire Lass" livened up the scene. As in the night she allegedly broke Shane McGowan's nose.

"I didn't break it," she says, laughing. "So that's that aspect of the story sorted out! What happened was that he wanted me to read some poetry out of a book and I said, `no, I don't want to'. And I started laughing. Then he said `you silly cow' and pushed me! And I thought, `I'm not having any of this' so I slapped him. I've never punched anyone, but a slap was enough to give him a nose bleed. Yet we made up afterwards. We were all just having a laugh!

"I used to drink too much, I don't any more," she adds. "Because I now think that if you do have a problem and you drink, it Just becomes bigger and bigger. So, although I still drink and have a good time, it's no more than other people drink. And I don't think I could ever really go crazy, because I really did have a fantastic, solid upbringing, am pretty secure at that level. I certainly don't believe drinking or doing drugs or any of that makes you a better singer, better musician. As in the idea, `oh, I'll go out and get pissed every night, and shoot up when I get home and that'll help me make better music.' I know I idolise someone like Billie Holiday, but I, don't look at her and think I have" to imitate her lifestyle, to try and sing like she did."

Lisa Stansfield is known to do a version of Billie's Good Morning Heartache that more than matches the original. On hearing that her idol, in the end, apparently had to have a bottle of bourbon before she could even begin to record and, more tragically, had to be strapped to a piano on stage, in order to perform, Lisa describes the latter image in particular as "probably one of the saddest things I've ever heard about the music industry."

CLEARLY, Lisa herself can capture the soul of a song without the aid of such "props". More than this, reviewing Lisa Stansfield one critic suggested that the "predominant emotion on the album is anxiety" a view that's hard to share given the celebratory nature of love songs such as The Real Thing and Never Gonna Fall. Or the anthemic nature of Footsteps. But what is Lisa's response to the criticism that the album is so polished it sometimes neutralises the soul of her voice, the element of raw emotion that has led to her reputation as "The First Lass of Soul"? It was produced, mostly, by her fiancee Ian Devaney.

"In terms of the production, the style I use is what I see as the `Lisa Stansfield sound' and I would hope that when anyone puts on one of my songs they don't even have to listen to my voice to know this is a Lisa Stansfield song, because of the way it sounds," she says.

"And I don't agree that our style of production kills the raw edge of emotion in my voice. Because I've always got that edge in my voice, anyway.a And as a vocalist I've, never been one of those people who try to make it absolutely perfect. If a vocal is a little out of tune, or a wrong note is hit, that doesn't matter as long as the sentiment is true. That's what I go for, no matter what's going on around my voice. That's why, when I go into the studio, I usually do no more than two or three vocals and that's as much as I want to do, in case I lose the spontaneity. My approach is that I look at a song, and the words and feel my way through it, basically."

Lisa Stansfield, along with Ian Devaney, has also written most of the songs on the new album. However, despite the fact that they have been "romantically involved" for years, she claims that "90 per cent of the songs on the album are just stories, not auto-biographical." Really? What about something like Suzanne?

"This is really strange," says Lisa, stubbing her cigarette. "My sister is called Suzanne. But Suzanne was really the only name that fits in that song. So in the song it is "dear sister, my boyfriend, or partner, is beating me up, you were right, I was wrong, you've got to help me through this". Yet a few people, when they heard it, thought Ian was knocking me about, which I found amazing, because Ian is just not that type of person. But I can understand why people respond to the song that way. And I definitely don't think love is about beating the shit out of each other - unless you enjoy that and it is something both partners want to do. But to anyone who thinks Suzanne is about Ian and I, I have to say, `that's your problem. It really is fictional'.

What Lisa says may be true of Suzanne - but surely it is quite legitimate for listeners to feel that songs like Never Gonna Fall definitely are about her and the man she loves, lives with, composes with and is engaged to? Pushing this question even further, isn't it "amazing" to use one of Lisa's gown favourite words - that she and Ian still are lovers, despite the fact that they work, write, create albums and live together in the same house-studio? Particularly - given the fact that she has recently gone public about their sex life, telling Cosmopolitan that the only thing that works against their sex life is the sound of a "squeaky bed"?

"That guy from Cosmopolitan was very pushy," she says, smiling. "And I know I shouldn't be talking about our sex life. After all, I wouldn't want Ian to talk about it in public! So that was out of order. But, what you say, overall, is true. When you realise that we do work and live together at all those levels it is amazing that we are still together. And still in love. So, yes, something like Never Gonna Fall definitely is all about Ian and I.