Stansfield

Web posted on:
Friday, July 09, 1999 4:00:40 PM EST

By Donna Freydkin
Reporting for CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- You'd think she'd be kicking herself.

After her 1990 platinum debut "Affection" and its hit "All Around the World," soul songstress Lisa Stansfield wanted to cross over to the big screen. And no one can accuse her of aiming low.

She says she almost landed the role of the ditzy bridesmaid Scarlet in the 1994 comedy "Four Weddings and a Funeral," but opted out due to scheduling conflicts. What's more, she says she nearly won the lead role played by Demi Moore in 1993's "Indecent Proposal."

"I'm glad the 'Indecent Proposal' thing came out the way it did," Stansfield says. "It would have thrown me right at the deep end. But it was a shame about 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.' They really wanted me to do it, but our schedules just didn't work. I was doing an album at the time."

A film career just didn't seem to be in the cards, and Stansfield decided to bide her time. Now, she says she's in the role of a lifetime in the film comedy "Swing." She plays the lead singer in a swing band, with Clarence Clemons ("Fatal Instinct," 1993) and Hugo Speer ("The Full Monty," 1997). She performs most of the music in the film.

And yet Stansfield once swore she'd never star in a music film. So why now?

"I guess I'm a hypocrite," she says, laughing. "But this was a wonderful movie. I said, 'Why not?' And this movie is not such a shock to anyone watching it, because it's a music movie. (It's) not like it's me going into a big dramatic role."

Thanks to MTV and the prevalence of music videos, Stansfield says the transition from stage to screen was a smooth one for her.

"I've done music videos in the past, so I knew how to react to the camera and all that stuff."

CLIPS FROM "SWING"

"Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" [140k MPEG-3] or [195k WAV] "Ain't What You Do" [175k MPEG-3] or [240k WAV] "Mack the Knife" [200k MPEG-3] or [270k WAV] "The Best Is Yet To Come" [195k MPEG-3] or [270k WAV] (Courtesy RCA Victor)

She's recorded an album to accompany the film. It features Stansfield performing 10 of the soundtrack's 15 songs, mostly covers of swing classics like "Ain't What You Do," "The Best Is Yet To Come," "Mack the Knife" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens."

"Swing" is one of the few soundtrack offerings that features one artist or group performing the majority of the music. A couple more of these rare albums are Public Enemy's recording for Spike Lee's 1998 "He Got Game;" Folk Implosion's "Kids" (1995) recording; and Shudder to Think's music for last year's "First Love, Last Rites."

Despite the double duty of acting and singing, Stansfield says she was up the task.

"It was a challenge for me," she says, "doing that type of music. I did the album because of the movie, because it's about swing music. It's a big job, because we had to get clearance for a lot of the songs, but we enjoyed doing it."

The English singer, born in 1966 in Rochdale near Manchester, started her career as a member of the band Blue Zone. Fairly quickly, her throaty voice honed by years of smoking drew attention.

She remains best known for the sultry R&B-flavored singles "This Is the Right Time" and "All Around the World," which established her as one of Britain's most recognizable performers. Stansfield, who says Barry White is one of her greatest influences. She even managed to record a remake of "All Around the World" with White.

"I promoted that album for two years," she says, "and it just started snowballing. When I stopped to think about it, I just thought, 'My God.' And it scared me, because than you have to back it up."

In the United States, Stansfield says people were surprised when they met her, and saw she was white. That husky voice, dripping with soul, initially confused them.

"If you do that style of music and cross over, people think you're black," she says. "It surprised me, really, because it had never happened to me before."

What's ahead

But since "All Around the World," things have been somewhat quiet on the Stansfield front. In 1990, she delivered a cover of Cole Porter's "Down in the Depths" for the album "Red Hot & Blue: All Time Great Rhythm& Blue Songs," raising money for AIDS research. She released two full-length albums, and is to start work on her next release within weeks.

Stansfield is somewhat hesitant about performing "Swing" music too much. "I'm not as popular in America as in Europe," she says. "And if I promote this album too much, people will get the wrong impression and think that I'm a swing singer now. But my next album will be all Lisa Stansfield."