All Around The World

Album: Affection (1989)
Charted: 1 3
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Songfacts®:

  • This song about searching for a lost love is the biggest hit for Lisa Stansfield, a white soul singer from England. It was the first ever US R&B #1 hit by a white UK female, and topped the charts in about a dozen countries.
  • The spoken intro came about when Stansfield, her boyfriend Ian Devaney, and other band member Andy Morris were sitting around the piano. Andy played some chords and Lisa began talking in a low voice, in a Barry White way. They liked the way it sounded and put it on the record. Stansfield, Devaney and Morris are the writers on the track.
  • The "ya ya ya ya"s in the chorus were put in as a placeholder until Lisa could come up with real lyrics. The nonsense placeholder worked so well, however, that they left it in.
  • Ian Devaney recalled in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, "We booked this little studio and started a really rough demo on an eight-track machine with Lisa's voice being done in one take. When we came to the proper recording, we transferred the original vocals to 24-track, added some strings and transferred it back to eight-track which we later mixed at home."
  • P. Diddy sampled this in 1997 on his song "Been Around The World."

Comments: 2

  • Sean Thomas Murphy Iii from Ennis IrelandI think this song is about my bestie bud Gavin (cherry) Berry. Unbeknown to him one summer morning in 1989 he happened upon a chance visit to the legendary house of a Miss Lisa Stansfield in the quaint and quiet rundown suburb of Rochdale, to put up an alarm system. When Miss Stansfield met the Ginger pube Cherry of Berry she overheard his conversations of far off holidays in exotic places that the Gawky Gingernut had fictionally visited, even tough he lived in the Ghetto council estate of Limeside which in 1989 was on par with war torn Beirut on a bad day of missile strikes. After questioning the carrot topped beanpole Gav about the Non-existence of a Narnia package holiday she decided to put pen to paper and write this song, hence ''All Around The World''.
  • Fernando from Fresno, CaGreat song! I first heard it as a teenager...now I completely identify with it...
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