Anastacia: I`m An Average Human Being

She likes listening to Amy Winehouse, finds it hard to see whom she can trust and thinks she is just a regular girl.

Alen Balen hosted the interview with `a little woman with a powerful voice`, US singer Anastacia for Plavi radio`s Backstage show.

Hi Anastacia – looking back, it seems like you became an overnight star.

Anastacia: I did, it was one song and that’s what it was, and all of a sudden my life was a different world. Spiritually for myself, emotionally, it’s really been hard. I’m such a normal human being, and then all of a sudden there’s the smoke and mirrors and the yes yes yes people. The business that says, ‘oh after this, everything’s gonna be fine, after you put this one single out. No after you put the next album out it’s gonna be great, you’re just gonna be flying high.’ And it never happens that way. So I think I stopped sort of listening to the stories that seemed too good to be true, and now I just take it as it is. And I decided not to beat myself up, I decided when things were going wrong to go ‘OK, well I’m not gonna do that next time. Ok well that person, now I know that they’re a yes person’… But you sort of have to learn from the things that you realise are what they are. I always give somebody a hundred points when I first meet them, so it takes me a little longer, ‘cos half the time they have to mess up for me to go ‘ Ah right, that person!’

You had paid your dues though hadn’t you as you’d been a dancer and had been singing for some time.

Anastacia: I super paid my dues ‘cos of course when I came out, the record company sort of shaved off six years of my life, so you all thought I was like 24 when I came out. And I thought it was quite an exciting thing, then, to go ‘Oh my god, I’m 24, I’m 24!’. Thinking it was cute, when I started ten years ago. And then all of a sudden, starting to talk about my age was getting to me because I’d then have to remember how old my sister was, when was I born, what was going on….!

Surely it doesn’t matter how old you are if you have a great voice like yours.

Anastacia: I think to be honest with you, that’s what keeps you in the business, it’s not what starts you in the business, and that is the utter truth. Because let me tell you, how somebody looks is a big reason to why they are, and where they are. I totally know that.

Amy Winehouse is someone like yourself with a powerful voice – do you like her or do you feel too much rivalry?

Anastacia: I love her voice maybe the way that people when they hear mine, ‘cos I don’t really feel the same way, I feel exhausted when I listen to my voice, I’m like (MAKES SNORING NOISE) you know, it exhausts me to know how much energy it takes to sing like that. But I love what her voice does to me spiritually. I just love listening to it, I love watching her, I don’t really feel the jealousy factor in my mates that are part of the same musical. I don’t feel that way ‘cos I’d go up on stage and sing with her, heck yeah!

You’ve had some talented producers and songwriters work on your album haven’t you?

Anastacia: I got really lucky, I worked with a lot of people and a lot of songs came out. I worked with Ne-Yo, I worked with Rodney Jerkins, I worked with J. R. Rotem and Guy Chambers. I mean there’s quite a lot of heavyweights I worked with. I really had an opportunity to work with quite a slew of heavyweights.