LISA Stansfield gives one of her trademark throaty chuckles as she considers her next tour which will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of her debut album, Affection.

“You know what love, I’m not really someone who looks back,” she said. “But it has been so lovely listening to the album as a whole - I’m rather proud of it actually.”

And so she should be. Affection turned the Rochdale-born singer into a global superstar. It sold a staggering five million copies worldwide and featured the hit singles All Around the World, What Did I Do to You and Live Together. It earned Lisa three Brit Awards, two Ivor Novello awards and two Grammy nominations.

“I was a bit nervous at first about the idea of playing Affection live again,” she said.

“But what’s really interesting is that it’s going to be like hearing songs from two different people - it will be a grown woman singing a girl’s songs, it’s going to be really interesting for me. I’m such a different person both emotionally and physically now.

“I think it is testament to the quality of those songs that they can be reinterpreted in this way.

“It does make me feel incredibly proud as a writer. People don’t recognise me as much as a songwriter, they see me as a singer which is because of the way I’ve been marketed over the years, but I genuinely love songwriting.”

Lisa co-wrote every song on Affection and has been involved in every album she has released since.

Some artists come to resent songs which become major successes - Lisa admits that she has sung All Around the World thousands of times over the years - but she appreciates the impact her songs have on her fans.

“A song can be very special to someone in the audience and you always have to remember that no matter how many times you may have sung it,” she said.

“As an artist you have to remember that that song may well be the reason why you are still here and being respected for what you do. Successful songs allow you to have a living and get to enjoy what you do.

“I think that the biggest thing that you can resent as an artist is you may have written hundreds of other songs and it would be great if people would listen to one of them occasionally rather than always listening to the hits.”

Success hasn’t changed Lisa. She may have a home in America and now lives in Ireland, she’s played on the world’s biggest stages but she’s still a northern girl at heart. Our conversation is peppered with colourful language which would make you blush but that’s just how she is.

She admits that the 30th anniversary tour has brought back memories which she hasn’t thought about for years.

“You do get little glimpses of the past working on something like this which actually is quite beautiful,” she said.

So did she have an inkling of the success that Affection would have?

“We knew we had written some good songs,” she said, “and there was a real energy about the whole thing when we were working on it.

“But it’s when everybody wants to have a little piece of it and start to get a little bit greedy that you think ‘oh, we may have something special here’.

“In this business you do get used to listening to people telling you you’re beautiful or the most talented person in the world 24 hours a day because they want to take your money off you. But fortunately I’m a very cynical person so I got over that really quickly. I have faith in myself and I’ve got a good monitor for filtering out all the nonsense.”

Last year Lisa released her eighth studio album Deeper, which went top 20 in the UK charts. Critics were impressed at both its relevance and its quality, confirming that after 30 years she’s ‘still got it’.

“The response to Deeper was amazing,” she said. “And it’s made me eager to move on to the next step whatever that will be.

“But before that I’m really concentrating on the Affection tour, Thirty years is a long time to want to carry on in this business so I think it’s appropriate that we have this benchmark. It is a beautiful celebration as I have had a lovely time doing all this up to now.

“We’re already writing for the next thing. We don’t know what it’s going to be yet which as an artist is such a luxury. But at my age - she’s a youthful looking 52- I’m not competing. I don’t want to compete with younger artists. I’m not that any more.

“The great thing is that when you get to this stage, you are not constantly in a race with yourself all the time, you’ve got a freedom which is quite beautiful.

“I think now is the closes that it’s been to those early days when we started out with a blank sheet of paper.”

Lisa is now looking forward to taking her show on the road in the autumn.

“We won’t be playing the album from start to finish in one go,” she said. “I don’t think that’s fair on the audience. But all the songs will feature but so will many others from over the years.

“Music has such an emotional connection to people and I know that my fans have invested so much into my songs, they deserve to hear them performed live.”

So she’s all set for the next 30 years then

“That’ll be pushing it won’t it love,” she laughed

Lisa Stansfield, the Lowry, Salford Quays, Saturday, October 26. Details from www.gigsandtours.com