Lisa Stansfield
Lisa Jane Stansfield (born April 11, 1966), better known as Lisa Stansfield, is an English R&B and soul singer from the United Kingdom.
After releasing several unsuccessful singles in her mid-teens (she also co-hosted a Children's TV pop show at this time, Razzmatazz with Alistair Pirrie), she became a major international star. Though her UK band Blue Zone saw modest success with the single "Jackie", she really came onto the radar with her guest vocal stint on Coldcut's record "People Hold On." She is probably best known for her first UK number one single, "All Around the World" (1989), which also peaked at #3 in the United States Billboard Hot 100 the following year. Other worldwide hits from her solo debut album Affection include "This is the Right Time" (featuring a house music-styled production by Coldcut with Mark Saunders), "Live Together", "What Did I Do To You" and "You Can't Deny It". "All Around the World" was the first song by a white female soloist to hit No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart; "You Can't Deny It" also topped that chart. Affection went platinum in the U.S., and sold a total of five million copies worldwide.
In 1990, Stansfield was among a handful of high-profile artists to participate in the Red Hot + Blue charity disc (which honored Cole Porter's songwriting, and benefitted AIDS research, at a time when funding from government agencies was insufficient to those in need). She got to show her swing and jazz chops on the song "Down in the Depths", which was one of few traditional renditions to appear on the album. Thus began an illustrious and respected tradition of Stansfield offering jazz and torch songs to outside projects (most recently she sang "I've Got the World On a String" for the Mona Lisa Smile soundtrack). This is likely what got her noticed for consideration as the female lead in the independent film Swing (1999), where she was to sing the majority of the film's songs as well as act.
In 1992, Stansfield won a BRIT Award as best British female solo artist. Her second album Real Love did not quite live up to the success of Affection, despite selling very well. However, it did spawn four Top 40 singles on the European charts: "Change", "All Woman", "Time to Make You Mine" and "Set Your Loving Free". "Change" has since become one of her classic singles: it can be heard on radio and in supermarket playlists to this day. "All Woman" became Stansfield's third No. 1 single on the Billboard R&B chart, and due to the success of that song, the album went gold in the U.S. "All Woman" is "kitchen sink soul", full of pathos and emotion from a domestic female point of view...
(Wikipedia: Lisa Stansfield)