Cool & Sweet

"People think I'm about 52. I suppose I'm a bit of an old tart". Tanita Tikaram, she of Good Tradition and the androgynous good looks is back. And most definitely not 52. In fact, she's a girlish 28. Still rather young to have already made five albums which, between them, have clocked up over seven million sales worldwide. Not to mention having a song (Twist in My Sobriety) covered by the Pet Shop Boys and Liza Minnelli. ("She's a very cool woman. I saw her in a theatre once but was too scared to go up to her").

Tanita was a mere 18 when her first album appeared, when everyone rushed to praise her confident, bassy voice and strangely opaque lyrics as the product of "an old head on young shoulders". "It was like it was happening to someone else", she says now. "I think I sound very young. I just remember working very hard. I missed the end of my adolescence, which is quite necessary to go through. But I've made up for it since", she giggles.

In the last year or two, Tanita's been in the bizarre position of watching her brother (Ramon) achieving zeitgesit-grabbing notoriety as Ferdy, the is-he-isn't-he-gay biker of uber-soap, This Life. They're not so close now, but she "always knew he'd be successful in something. It was just a question of when".

She's been no slouch herself, making a cameo appearance in dyke filmmaker Monica Treut's Taboo Parlour. "She's a friend, a very scary, clever, wonderful woman. I barely do anything in the film. I was really bad, I felt like a bimbo".

Then, of course, thee's the new record, Cappuccino Songs, which sails into view on a shiny froth of simple tunes and assured pop suss. It's eclectic but glossy, an accurate reflection of her current listening: "I'm really quite anti-muso", she explains. "I think that it's much harder to do good pop songs. I loved that Ultra Nate single, Free, and I'm listening to a lot of Brazilian music". She also tackles Abba's classic The Day Before You Came (remember Blancmange's gloomy mid- Eighties version?). Tanita's is a spooked, disquieting reading: "I loved that song from an early age. I remember Agnetha in the video, standing at the station with a suitcase. I just had a vision of a woman of a certain age having an affair".

So is it strange to find yourself in the unlikely position of making a comeback at the tender age of 28? "I'm very nervous", she confides. "I just feel goofy - I always think it's a weird world that I just don't get. I'm really not very cool".

She's a bundle of contradictions, then - this still - young woman over seven and a half million people know as Tanita Tikaram. A funny, shy, and disarmingly self-effacing person, she's also a funny, shy young woman who's just made an album of good pop songs. No froth.

Cappuccino Songs is released by Mother Records on June 15^th (alas, not in the United Kingdom until August).

There was an accompanying picture that can be found on the pictures page.