We're sitting next to Anastacia as she eats sushi for lunch and she's given us her iPad to listen to her singing live on tour. It's not the most comfortable of situations and we don't really know how to behave.
Should we tap our feet and click our fingers? Start singing along or bust some moves around the meeting room we're in, fist-pumping the air to demonstrate how moved we are by her vocals?
We need the song to be over, not because we don't like it, but because we can't handle the awkwardness any longer. When it is, we of course tell her how much we love her powerhouse of a voice. We are just too British to cope with this kind of thing.
But Anastacia , as we know, is all American in her sensibilities. We can only dream of having her lack of self-deprecation and levels of self-assuredness. As we chat about various people she's met and knows, she casually chucks in that her mate EJ (known otherwise to you and me as Elton John ) is 'such a fan', that Hugh Jackman was 'in awe of me' and that when she heard her live album for the first time, 'I didn't realise how good I was. It's good. I'm like, "I did this?"'
Having battled breast cancer twice, Anastacia has been through a lot in her 48 years, but she hasn't let it beat her, and she's feeling more confident in herself than ever before.
"I'm completely happy in my own skin, like I really love myself so much more than I did when I was younger. I look at old pictures and I remember I thought I was fat and I was a good 15lb less than I am now. I didn't have a great capacity for self-worth then, but wisdom and confidence comes with age. Being older has made me better, and calmer," she says.
"I don't get looked at as much as I used to because I was putting it out there with the cropped tops, cleavage everywhere and the peacock walk. I still do that on stage but I don't do that when I'm regularly walking around on the earth. I'm now mum age. I get called Maam instead of Miss. But it doesn't bother me."
Anastacia and ex husband Wayne Newton (Photo: Wireimage)She is, she says, happily single, having divorced her bodyguard ex-husband back in 2010.
"I never look and I never have looked. When I'm not looking there's always an offer. I'm very comfortable with me, I've always been that way," she says. "I love myself and I don't compromise. I have the best of both worlds. I choose to be with people when I choose to be but I don't need a man or children to validate me as a person."
There is one thing that left Anastacia feeling uncomfortable in her skin, and that was taking part in the last series of Strictly Come Dancing , which she was voted out of in week five.
"I was out of my element dancing and I didn't love feeling that way. I've never felt like I dance as good as I sing and I kept comparing the two in my head. Everybody comes with their own baggage and that's my baggage," she says.
"When I look back at it I'm horrified, because I know I didn't dance well. I'm my own worst critic, which makes me focused on doing better. I knew I was limited in my movements. But I did it for women, and for breast cancer awareness. It was so emotional for me. I felt like I'd be letting women with breast cancer down by leaving."
Anastacia and Brendan Cole when she was voted off Strictly Come Dancing (Photo: BBC)Read More
Anastacia is most definitely a trooper.
"I'm not nervous going out there, I don't think of how many millions of people are watching. I don't like nerves, they make me uncomfortable, so I talk them away because I don't want them to be part of me."
What on earth does it take to make this woman nervous then, we wonder?
"Maybe a date. That's a whole different kind of nerves. If a guy starts flirting with me, I'm like, "Oh God!" I don't know what to do."
We ask what her secrets are to looking great at 48, which she does, particularly when you think of all the cancer battles she has been through. She says she's always looked young for her years.
"When I came out people thought I was 23 and I was 32, I looked really young. But health problems can age a person,' she says. 'I don't drink and I don't smoke. I'd rather have two Diet Cokes a week. Anything you put in your body that isn't natural is a poison, so I pick and choose my poison. I don't need alcohol to have a good time in a pub. I'm pretty much the first one on the bar. I love life, I love to live it and I don't need an altered substance to do that."
Anastacia is off on a UK tour in the coming months and, needless to say, it will not be the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend.
On stage (Photo: Getty)"I don't go out at night and I don't go to clubs and I'm not around smoke. It never gets rock 'n' roll, it's like the "Milk and Cookies Tour". My shots are ginger shots. I never let rip, because my health and my voice can't handle that."
So, definitely no crates of Jack Daniels on the tour bus or parties in hotel rooms?
"It used to be Doritos and red wine and now it's water, hummus, fruit and yoghurt. A hot humidifier is great! When I'm in a hotel it actually breaks my heart when people want to give me flowers when I'm only there for 24 hours because I can't enjoy the gift. But I'll give them to the tour bus driver for his wife, or the hotel maid."
Does she ever succumb to a diva moment, though?
"I'm proud to be a diva. I'm a diva because I like to have my hair and make-up done, and I like to wear pretty clothes. I haven't had diva moments, though, but I've had moments when maybe I'm not of sound mind and I'm like, "My coffee is not hot enough!" Like it can be a time-of-the-month situation where you're crying because you burnt your toast. I've done things that haven't been rational."
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Both of Anastacia 's parents sang – her dad was a Sinatra-style crooner, her mum sang in church – so Anastacia started singing herself when she was six and 'like a teeny black woman on helium'.
"I was the person they wanted to put in shows without auditioning," she says. "My mum knew I had a natural gift but she didn't want to push me."
She says that her success came relatively late because, "it was just never right. I didn't look how they wanted me to look, because of how I sounded. I was kind of a rock chick, but I wasn't singing like a rock chick, I was singing like Chaka Khan, or Janis Joplin, with a little bit of Britney Spears. So it was like, Woah there are too many artists in the room." But that was me. I wasn't trying to be anybody else."
Her big break eventually came on an MTV show called The Cut, which was like 'Pop Idol before Pop Idol'.
A lot has happened in the 19 years since, from the highs of her big hits like I'm Outta Love and Left Outside Alone to the lows of her two fights against breast cancer, which resulted in a double mastectomy. She has 'unrelentless passion' for raising awareness and let cameras in to film a documentary about her battle – she was even filmed straight after surgery. 'I didn't hold back, I let them see everything, all my darkest moments. I didn't know if I was going to stick around, sweetheart, so if it's the last thing I do, let me have helped someone.'
Luckily it was far from the last thing she did, and when you think of all she's been through and overcome in her 48 years, she's damn right to love herself like she does.
How would you spend your ideal Sunday?
People are going to go 'gross' but it's just being with my friends who have young kids. Changing their nappies, giving them baths and bottles. I have a child seat in the back of my car and I'll drive them to the park and go to a kid's movie and a kid-friendly restaurant. I'm Aunty 'Stacia. That's my perfect day.
Lie-in or up with the lark?
I'm never up with the lark, girl, not unless it's absolutely necessary. I'm a black-out-curtains kinda gal. I'm a rock 'n' roller and I'm used to going to bed late and making sure I get enough sleep. If I'm awake until 5am after a show, I watch a million things until my eyes get so tired I have to close them, and then I'll sleep until 1pm.
Muesli or a fry-up?
I'm not really a breakfast person, but if I was, then I'm a granola, Greek yoghurt and fruit sort of person. Not eggs, not a fry-up, and I don't eat meat. I used to love a roast chicken dinner, but I can't eat it any more because of my Crohn's disease.
Lazy day or gym day?
I'm not a gym person. At all. So it'll be me and my sister in front of the TV, watching Come Dine With Me. We are junkies for that show, we watch episode after episode – we're always astounded by it, it's the best show.
Anastacia will be touring the UK in May and June. For tickets visit livenation.co.uk/anastacia-tickets
Source: www.bing.com
