Joan Armatrading looks back on her 50 years in the music business

It’s all part of her celebrations as she marks 50 years in the music business, celebrations which include a live album (Live at Asylum Chapel) from a one-night-only livestream last year plus a book of her lyrics.

Joan arrived in the UK, flying into Birmingham from St Kitts at the age of seven to join her parents, catching the bus to their house. Her debut album came out in 1972. Since then, three-times Grammy nominated, she has forged a unique path – the first UK female singer/songwriter to gain international success, the first female UK artist to debut at number one in Billboard’s Blues charts and the first female UK artist to be nominated for a Grammy in the blues category.

She has an Ivor Novello Academy Fellowship Award, a Lifetime Achievement from the Radio 2 Folk Awards and the British Folk Festival… and somehow 50 years have gone by.

“I think first of all I just think how lucky I am that people are still interested and are still wanting to see me and wanting to talk to me and to hear my music. If I was still doing concerts I know that people would still want to come along to them and people do ask me. I stopped doing shows after the last tour in 2018. I just found that it was right to step back and slow down in that respect. I will never stop writing as long as I live but I'm just not touring at the moment. I just don't want to. After that tour in 2018 I thought well I've been touring since 1972 and that was enough, but I will never say never. Who knows what I might want to do in five years’ time or maybe ten years’ time but for the moment it feels like the right decision for me. I absolutely loved doing what I did but I didn't want to get to the stage where I no longer knew why I was doing it. In some ways those 50 years have absolutely whizzed by and you just think no it doesn't seem it but at the same time it does seem it in many ways. My first album was 1972. I started writing when I was 14. I didn't have any sense of beavering away. I've always been very prolific. I'm very lucky that way and the last album was my 22nd. The first album was 72 and the second album was 75 but that was only because I decided to leave the record company. And then I had albums in 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981 and so on. I've always been able to write a lyric and a melody. It's just something that comes to me.”

Looking back: “I think the biggest change has been the technology and the relationship between the musician and the record company. In terms of what I do, how I go about writing, I don't think I've changed very much really. I'm still writing and I start with the piano or guitar and I just write the song, and actually I think what I've been writing about hasn’t changed that much either. I'm still writing about relationships and how people relate to each other.”

The book of lyrics is a particular pleasure “I think there are about 100 lyrics in there, maybe more. Faber & Faber approach me and asked if I'd like to do it and I just thought it was a great idea. I don't know if they knew about the anniversary.”

But it's great to see how the lyrics stand alone: “I think I've always wanted to write lyrics that you can take away from the melody and still get a sense of. Obviously you want to write rhythmically but you obviously really want the lyrics to mean something as well. It is a really nice book. It's got a really nice cover and I gave them some notes to some of the songs which they've also used.”

The live album Live at Asylum Chapel is released November 18 on BMG. The book of lyrics The Weakness In Me: Selected Lyrics is out Nov 3.