Lisa Stansfield is a British soul singer inspired by black American music. But, in spite of that influence, her initial success in he United States faded early.
Ms. Stansfield began recording singles in her teens in the early eighties. Her 1989 debut album Affection yielded two major hit singles in both Britain and America, "All Around the World" (which earned a gold record in the U.S.) and "You Can't Deny It," and her follow-up LP Real Love from 1991 gave her two more hits, "Change" and "All Woman." She soon became as well-known for the curl in her hair as well as for her sultry voice.
After that, though, her career cooled stateside. Her 1993 album So Natural produced three hit singles in her home country - the title track, "All the Right Places" and "Little Bit of Heaven." None of these singles even charted in the United States. In America, a country known for making pop icons out of novelty acts, Lisa Stansfield, as a white Britgirl who wounded like a black Yankee girl, was just another novelty. 😢
Lisa Stansfield
released several more LPs, including her self-titled 1997 fourth album, 2001's Face Up, and 2004's The Moment, but by the early twenty-first century her popularity was even waning in Britain. Perhaps that's why her appropriately titled seventh album, Seven, which came out in 2014, was her first LP in a decade.
Lisa Stansfield, whatever her recent commercial failures, remains a fine R&B singer in her own right. You can't take that way from her. Or, as she would put it, you can't deny it. 😉
That's it for my ninth series of beautiful women in music. A new A-Z round begins in February.
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