Lisa Stansfield

With her broad Lancashire accent and bubbly personality, Lisa Stansfield not only became one of Britain's best-loved pop stars of the 1980s but she also enjoyed big success in America as one of the few white singers to hit the higher reaches of the R&B charts. Initially a presenter on teen TV show 'Razzmatazz', Stansfield's chart success came with the band Blue Zone which had hits with 'On Fire' and 'Jackie'. She enjoyed further acclaim singing on the Coldcut hit 'People Hold On' but the 1989 smash 'All Around the World' - a UK number one and a US number three - was her greatest triumph.

From the album 'Affection', 'All Around the World' was produced by her husband and main collaborator Ian Devaney and went on to sell more than five million copies. Further hits including 'You Can't Deny It', 'This Is the Red Time', 'Live Together' and 'What Did I Do to You' followed and she was named Best Female Solo Artist at two consecutive BRIT Awards. Her second album 'Real Love' was less successful, although she had further hits with 'All Woman', 'Change' and 'Set Your Loving Free', pursuing dance music with third album 'So Natural' (1993), including the hits 'In All the Right Places' and 'Little Bit of Heaven'.

Stansfield returned to the charts in the late 1990s with a Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' remix of 'People Hold On' and in 1999 she starred and sang in the independent movie 'Swing'. In the 2000s she concentrated on acting, appearing on the London stage in 'The Vagina Monologues' and the 2008 movie 'The Edge of Love', but she also kept up the music side with albums 'Face Up' (2001), 'Biography: The Greatest Hits' (2003) and 'The Moment' (2004). In 2013 she embarked on a European tour performing some of her greatest hits and released her seventh studio album 'Seven'. She followed this with her next record, 'Deeper', in 2018.