Songfacts®:

• In this song, Lisa Stansfield plays the role of an overworked and underappreciated homemaker. When her husband comes home and tells her she looks dowdy, she replies:
  
  I may not be a lady
  But I'm all woman
  From Monday to Sunday I work harder than you know
  
  Stansfield often sings in character, visualizing the person to get in their shoes. That's the case here.
  
  "People get trapped sometimes and they don't feel they have a voice," she told The Guardian. "And if you can in some way help someone by writing a song, it's really lovely."
• "All Woman" is part of Lisa Stansfield's second album as a solo artist, Real Love, released in 1991. Back in 1983 she formed a band called Blue Zone with two of her former classmates, trumpeter Andy Morris and keyboardist Ian Devaney. They were signed by Rocking Horse in 1986 and had some moderate success with a single called "Jackie." In 1989 Stansfield was invited by the dance music duo Coldcut to provide vocals on their single "People Hold On." That song reached #11 in the UK and Stansfield was signed by Arista as a solo artist on the strength of its success. However, the trio remained together, just this time not as a group. Morris and Devaney were to be the backbone for Lisa's career, composing and producing most of her solo material on her first two albums, including "All Woman." After many years of friendship and engagement, Lisa and Ian Devaney got married on July 25, 1998.
• In America, "All Woman" was a #1 hit on the R&B chart, the third for Stansfield, following "All Around The World" and "You Can't Deny It."
  
  It was another 16 years before another white solo artist topped that chart: Robin Thicke with "Lost Without U" in 2007. (Mariah Carey is mixed race.)