“Oh, I’m like the laziest cow ever!” Gabrielle is telling me, her voice raising an octave to accompany the exclamation. “When it comes to touring, I like my own bed.” As a direct consequence, she points out: “I only ever work, on average, three months out of every year, haha!”
We are sitting in a compact room in her record company, and it quickly becomes apparent that its size is insufficient for Gabrielle’s personality, which is huge, looming and booming. She has been away from the limelight for 11 years now – when she last made music, Gordon Brown was Prime Minister – and is about to release a new album, Under My Skin. The impression she gives is that she is glad to be back.
“What have I been doing these past 11 years?” she repeats. “Living life! I’m a mum, and if you are a parent, there is always so much to do: breakfast, the school run, the washing-up. Then it’s lunch. I tell you, I was never out of the kitchen! What’s that all about? It’s parenthood! A full-time job!”
‘It feels like it’s my time now. I’m a middle-aged woman, proud of it, and I’m owning it’
She laughs wildly, then calms herself. “But now the pressure is off a little. My kids are older [her son is 23, her daughter 15] and they no longer need me as much as they used to. They’re always on their phones…”
So last year she wrote a bunch of songs, and went into the studio to record them. “It feels like it’s my time now. I’m a middle-aged woman, proud of it, and I’m owning it!” She laughs again, and seems to vibrate on the sofa with such force that her buttocks rise several inches in the air. “Sorry, I’m a nutter,” she says, rearranging herself. “I’ve got more rabbit than Sainsbury’s, me.”
There is a distinct difference between Gabrielle the recording artist and Gabrielle the human being. The latter could light up the Blackpool illuminations with her fingertips alone, while the former is all sophisticated serenity. Her sixth album in 25 years, Under My Skin, is classic Gabrielle territory: rich and lustrous, with songs of heartbreak but melodies that strive towards ultimate optimism. It sounds more like 1970s soul than its 21st-century counterpart, but the woman herself doesn’t consider herself a soul singer, and never has.
“Okay, you might see a black woman singing, but I don’t think I’ve ever been defined by my colour, and my songs have never been just soul. Take ‘Out Of Reach’. That’s not a ‘black woman’ song; it’s a pop song!” I try to point out to her that “Out Of Reach” is too full-fat-cream for pure pop – a compliment, incidentally – and that the pure pop she is referring to is Steps and S Club 7, acts she came of age alongside in the 1990s. But she’s having none of it.
“This country is lucky enough to have proper soul singers – Beverley Knight, Mica Paris – these wonderful singers with powerful voices, but I’ve never had a voice like that. I’ve always been in my own little box. I’m a pop singer.”
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It’s been a full quarter of a century since her debut single, “Dreams”, went to number one around the world, its singer instantly visually arresting because, she says, “who else sang with an eyepatch, right?” She is not wearing the eyepatch today, but is instead sporting a hairstyle straight out of Game of Thrones: shaved around the sides, while a lustrous curtain of jet black hair swoops down to cover her right eye. She was born with ptosis, a lazy eye, that made her school years, in Brockley, south London, gruelling. She has been concealing it from public view ever since.
“Before I had an operation to remove a muscle from the eye, it twitched all the time, so it looked like I was constantly blinking. As you can imagine, I got a hard time at school from all the witches and bitches.”
She brings a hand up to her mouth now as if to catch the words that have already escaped it, and she apologises for what she calls her bad language. “They always made fun of me.” But she is quick to point out that she was never the shy wallflower people might have taken her for. “I grew up with three brothers, so I could take care of myself. Often did, ha!”
Still, the scars we carry from school we carry for life, and Gabrielle’s confidence was duly dented. She loved to sing, but knew that the idea of becoming a pop star was a pipe dream. When it happened – and it happened quickly; she was barely 24 – it took her by surprise.
‘I realised that I never really wanted to be famous. I just wanted to sing’
“I loved it, but I realised that I never really wanted to be famous. I just wanted to sing. Everything else that came with it – well, I had to adapt.”
Two years later, in 1995, her fame turned ugly. A former boyfriend, Tony Antoniou, was arrested and found guilty of killing his stepfather, stabbing him 52 times, then beheading the corpse with a ceremonial sword. The press beat a hasty path to Gabrielle’s door.
She shakes her head. “Yes, I’d had his baby, but we had already split up, he was with someone else who was pregnant, but nobody went to her, it was all about me, the pop star. It sold newspapers, I guess. Because there was so much attention around me, people thought I was somehow linked to it.”
She subsequently had to testify in court. “That was horrendous; you have no idea. But look, it happened, it’s in my past; it doesn’t define me.”
She moved on, and in time revived her career. For all the sunshine she tends to exude in person, though, you still sense a private pain lurking somewhere within. Much of the album is shot through with melancholy. On one track, “Put Up A Fight”, she sings: “Don’t you think we’re worth the fight/Is it that we’re just not right?” with a real depth of feeling, and that feeling is misery.
‘It’s important to love yourself. Look at Adele. She looks like she loves herself, and she is fricking amazing’
I ask her if she is in a relationship right now? Is she happy?
“Actually, I’m very much single at the moment, but I am kind of in love with someone… But look, let me tell you, I am in a good place. I am! And I would say to people, especially women, that when you realise you are happy in yourself, that’s the time to look for someone. If you are not happy, then you are just looking to fill that void, and you will be devastated when it doesn’t work out.
“It’s important to love yourself. Look at Adele. She looks like she loves herself, and she is fricking amazing. And I’m happy with who I am now. I just turned 49, so I’ll be 50 next year, and I tell you what, I can’t wait. Life is good now. It really is.”
‘Under My Skin’ by Gabrielle is released on 17 August
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