Anastacia is the big voiced singer with the personality to match. As she prepares to get back on the road with the Here Come The Girls tour, Matt Thomas discovers why she’s looking forward to giving full rein to her crazy side
HERE Come The Girls and they’re more determined than ever to put on a show. The package tour featuring pop dames Anastacia, Lulu and Heather Small takes the stage at the Cardiff International Arena next week with one aim – to celebrate womanhood.
That’s according to Anastacia anyway.
The singer has been plugging away at showbusiness since the early ’90s, first of all as a dancer before committing herself full-time to cranking out the big-voiced soul belters that became her trademark.
Click here to find out more!
Now she’s back on tour with a lengthy jaunt around Britain with her fellow female stars.
It’s second time around for her, following last year’s successful outing, and it finds her in an interesting position.
Taking to the stage alongside Lulu, the original little woman with a giant voice, sees her installed as one of pop’s grandees, no longer the up-and-coming slugger, but a more stately figure. But don’t think for a minute that her essential spark has been in anyway dimmed, she warns.
“Hey, we’re all pretty full-on you know. When we get going there’s no holding us back,” she says.
“I couldn’t say no when Lulu came back with the proposition of doing all this all over again.
“I absolutely had to do it. It’s all about celebrating women and womanhood and having fun,” she says.
“I mean with these guys you get 100% commitment and a huge sense of enjoyment of music and I think that comes across as soon as we get on stage. Last year we had Chaka Khan, now we’ve got Heather, it’s a thrill to be back.”
It’s possible to imagine that Anastacia’s robust and easy-going nature has come at a price. Her personal life has been somewhat tempestuous at times, including a three-year marriage to bodyguard Wayne Newton, and she has been dogged with health problems for years – suffering as she does from Crohn’s disease and overcoming a bout of breast cancer in 2003.
She has spoken in the past about her difficulties coping with her own feelings, of the negative effect that stress and pressure has on her Crohn’s and the importance of keeping her persona open and positive.
“I feel like I do have quite a lot of strength in me,” she says.
“Kind of the ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ thing. But I think I’ve always been that way, it’s not necessarily because of what I’ve been through. To get along in this business, you’ve got to be pretty tough and determined and all of those things. As long as you’re not a terrible person, I mean, all that stuff’s okay. But it can be hard, there can be negative people out there. You just have to keep going and not let it drag you down.”
As a 42-year-old woman in a notoriously aged-obsessed business, surrounded by starlets like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez whose careers began burgeoning long before they turned 18, she does admit that taking stock has become somewhat more important of late.
“Yeah, I’m definitely aware of the fact that I’m at a stage in my career where I might have to think about what I’m doing and where I’m going, but then again there’s another part of me that is just completely crazy,” she says.
“There’s some tension there, it’s a balancing act for sure, but that’s something I’ve always had, the two different sides of me – the grown up, sensible, career-minded woman and the crazy girl. It’s always about playing one off against each other and hoping it turns out okay. It usually goes to s*** but that’s the way it goes.”
This summer found Anastacia putting in a spell behind the judges’ desk on Five’s Glee-referencing talent show Don’t Stop Believing. Given that she got her first break courtesy of MTV’s star-search The Cut, it must have been a fairly odd situation in which to find herself.
“Well, you know I do feel like I’ve had an enormous amount of luck and that I’m very privileged to be in this position and doing what I’m doing,” she says.
“So when I find myself in a position where I can offer advice, where I’m being asked to do that, I’m not going to be shy. Though I’m not the sort of person who gives personal advice without being asked. At least I hope I’m not anyway. But seeing it from the place I’m at now, I think I’ve done okay. It makes me quite proud of myself and I think that’s okay.”
Here Come The Girls, Cardiff International Arena, Thursday, December 2. Tickets priced £25-£55 from the box office on 029 2022 4488
source: Wales online
Twitter
