Joss Stone focuses on the music, not the tabloids

Posted December 6, 200717 yr

If ever English singer and songwriter Joss Stone decides she wants out of the music business she is ready with a back-up plan: candlemaking.

The 20 year-old, who emerged to fame in 2003 with her debut album, The Soul Sessions, is in Auckland for her first New Zealand concert.

Stone has been touring for the past year and all that travelling has given her plenty of time to think about her future.

"I've got lots of ideas that I'd love to do, I pretty much want to do everything," Stone told NZPA.

"The music industry, I'll probably always be involved in because I love music but I want to do other things as well.

"I love working with animals, I love working with people."

Not surprisingly, Stone says she loves creating things and is toying with the idea of maybe one day launching her own fashion line, but not yet.

"You know all these ideas flying around in my head, like I'd like to make my own candles, you know what I mean? It's not just the usual, I like creating things."

Stone has been busy being creative, as well as the release of her third album, Introducing Joss Stone, the Devon-native also found time for an acting debut in last year's fantasy adventure film Eragon.

Stone says, with more than ten million albums sold worldwide, all that work makes for a boring life.

"I'm really boring, I don't like to go out and party all night long.

"I love to relax and chill, and go to sleep."

Unless you've spent a day in her shoes, you are unlikely to understand her life or how hard she works, she says.

Before hitting the road at the beginning of her career the life appeared "like fun and glamorous and all that kind of bull."

But now she is wiser.

Stone says she is trying to understand why people don't understand her.

"Like when I speak, people will ask me questions about my life and then refuse to listen to me because they already have an idea in their head, of how it should be or how it is.

"They see the visual of a singer in a video or magazine and it just doesn't match up and that's how I saw it before.

"So I can't even blame people, I totally get it.

Stone says she is not trying to downplay her life, it can be fun.

" When you're on stage and people feel the music and sing the words with you, that's when it counts.

"But it's still a job, you have to work hard if you want things in life.

Stone, who has high expectations of herself, says she is very critical of her work.

The award winning singer says she reads reviews sometimes but admits they can be terrible and depressing.

"But they never really diss the music, they diss my hair colour or something like that, and it really doesn't matter, it doesn't mean $h!t when you say something like that.

"It does mean something when they're talking about how my show is, and my band and the way I sang, cos that's why I'm here, to get it right and to let you have a good time."

How often do you think you get it right?

"Pretty often. I think I've got it down now, it's just every now and then you'll have an off day and you'll be like "I wish I could have been better". Stone says it's only work until she gets on stage.

"Then the magic comes to life, I do enjoy those times."

Stone has never taken her success for granted and still can take a step back at times and appreciate the special moments when they happen.

"Singing with James Brown was a big thing for me, cos I really liked him, he was a good guy and Gladys Knight, that was a good one..."

She says despite commanding huge audiences and a worldwide fan base, she gets scared.

"I'm always scared, I think I've been scared 90 percent of my life.

"But that's what makes you do it, you can't let your own wussiness get the best of you, that would be terrible.

"Then I'd just stay indoors."

Staying indoors wouldn't do Stone much good, with this year being her worst for headlines from the tabloids about her personal life, 90 percent of which is generated from the British press, she says.

"I've been trying to figure this out, cos I analyse a lot of things, constantly and a lot of the time, and pretty much every single time, it's not true.

"Even if they followed me around 24/7 they would have nothing.

"There's not really much to talk about.

Stone says the tabloids make up the stories regardless of what she does or doesn't do.

"There've been so many weird ones.

"They said I bought my grandad tickets to the Rugby World Cup and I flew him, private, 100km or something to get him there.

"They put a quote in from him `oh I love my granddaughter" blah, blah, blah.

"He had died a year before that.

"I honestly don't have to do anything, I don't have to go out, I just have to sit there and be me and they just carry on."

Stone says she deals with it by accepting she can't change it.

" I guess you just hope that everyone who loves you is clever enough to not believe it, cos it can offend them.

"I think they're learning, as much as I am."

Stone says the only reason she is where she is today is because of the music.

"At the end of the day it's worth it, music is so beautiful, it's the best thing in my life out of everything in the world.

"It's guaranteed to love you back and it's good for everybody, nobody hates music.

"I'm able to be part of that, to create it and show people, everyday.

"If they took away my music then I'd be gone."