Eleven Kinds of Loveliness

'It's not like I can be Madonna and come back with a new body part.'
Tanita Tikaram interviewed by Nick Hornby

Tanita Tikaram is 25 years old, and she already knows who she wants to perform on her tribute album. "Jennifer Warnes, definitely." (She glances at the tape recorder, as if Jennifer might be about to leap out of it and offer her services.) "Nanci Griffith. Paul Simon. Mary Margaret O'Hara. Aretha Franklin - not that she'd be interested, but anyway. . . Randy Travis. Don Williams. Los Lobos. And John Hiatt, of course."

It is only fair to point out that there is no question of immodesty on Ms Tikaram's part. The line-up for the tribute album was my idea rather than hers, and her relish for the project springs from the very large part of her that is a fan, rather than from any feeling that she is long overdue this sort of recognition. Even so, she has the back catalogue for such a project now: her new album, Lovers in the City, is her fifth in a seven-year recording career; she has even managed to find time for a two-and-a-half year break since her last recording, the surprising, affecting Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, which was in itself conceived as a kind of tribute record: to Al Green, Nina Simone, the Kinks, "old blues things", and, crucially, the brilliant Mary Margaret O'Hara - a name that crops up with some frequency in our conversation.

Her sabbatical was partly prompted, it would appear, by her record company's disappointment with Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, her first self-produced album, and her strongest collection to date. "They didn't really . . . love it too much, so I lost a lot of confidence, and decided to work with someone else." Was it the production they were unhappy with? "I think it was the production, the voice, the songs, everything."

The Tikaram voice on Eleven Kinds of Loneliness was particularly startling, and seemed to owe something to her entirely understandable admiration for O'Hara, whose one album and eccentric live shows of a few years back, made an impression. "I cried all the way through the concert. I thought, I'll never be like this." Later, she found herself eating in the same restaurant as her new heroine, but her courage failed her. "So I wrote a note and gave it to the waitress, but she gave it to the wrong woman." One could not, perhaps, have wished for a clearer indication that O'Hara's career had its own problems, but Tikaram pressed on regardless: hence the vocal swoops and quirks, and the unadorned intimacy, that made Eleven Kinds of Loneliness such an attractive proposition. "My voice wasn't very controlled, it was taking a lot of chances, and maybe I don't do that any more, and that's really sad."

Lovers in the City is still a long way from the over-earnest and overwritten albums that brought her a massive following and a lot of critical condescension in the late Eighties ("sixth-form pop" etc - predictable insults, given that she was in a Basingstoke sixth form when she was discovered). The single I Might Be Crying pits Tikaram's extraordinary deep growl against a relaxed Herb Alpert-style trumpet arrangement, and the end result is something that Dusty Springfield wouldn't have kic ked out of bed for eating biscuits. Those who made up their mind about Tikaram when they heard her first hit, Good Tradition, or when they heard that its successor was entitled Twist in my Sobriety, might be pleasantly surprised.

Unfortunately, however, the critical condescension lives on, somewhat nastier in tone now. "Even sixth-formers are hip enough to hate her these days," another broadsheet sneered in its review of I Might Be Crying. Tikaram, perhaps wisely, refuses to read reviews - "I'd be too scared" - but does talk thoughtfully about the problems of young women who are cruelly forced to earn their living by being pop stars, especially when - "I don't know how to say this, you're just . . . sort of . . . a non-sort of. . . non-bimbo type woman . . . If you only have your music, then you can't really manipulate your image - it's not like I can be Madonna and come back with a new body part to present to the public."

Her youth and her slightness of build - accentuated now by her boyish haircut - have, one suspects, also led to problems with other musicians, and one of the many satisfactions of Eleven Kinds of Loneliness was the opportunity it afforded her to be part of a working band - the Brontë Brothers - for the first time in her career. "I have worked with musicians who patronized me, who said, 'You're not playing in time.' When I met the Brontë Brothers they said, "We'll play in any time you want, we'll follow you, that's what we're paid for."

The Bront¨ Brothers are not much in evidence on Lovers in the City; instead, there is an orchestra, and the co-production of Thomas Newman, whose soundtracks for Scent of a Woman and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe attracted Tikaram's attention. He had never worked in production before, and the singer feels that this was to her advantage; "He was so fresh - he was a little boy, innocent." The collaboration worked so well that she found her confidence restored, and produced half of the newalbum herself.

Tikaram is attractively prone to self-deprecation - qualities not frequently discernible in the pop world. She expresses regret that there is no Mary Margaret figure in her life: "I haven't got anyone at the moment who I idolize. On this one I had other things going on in my life that inspired me a move to Paris, a spell in LA, an obviously important new relationship . But I don't think there's anyone now I can look up to." In the absence of a guiding spirit, she has been reading Lorrie Moore, and listening to the Italian Lucio Battisti - "the sort of songs that make you want to cry. They have a sense of yearning about them, they're so passionate. I'd love to write songs like that". What stops her? "I'm just English, aren't I?" She hoots with laughter, covers her mouth with her hand, and apologises.

I ask her who she hangs out with and what they do, and she gives me a list of her friends' occupations - so and so's temping, someone else is a mature student. No musicians? More jokey self-deprecation: "No. And I've always been quite gutted that I've never had that celebrity credibility - they don't see any value in hanging out with me." One feels that she's better off reading her Lorrie Moore and listening to her Lucio Battisti than she is messing about with Evan Dando or Damon from Blur.