Anastacia on her debut 25 years ago: ‘I wasn’t feminine enough. I wasn’t white enough or Black enough’

When Anastacia appeared as a contestant on MTV’s Nineties talent show The Cut, audiences heard her before they saw her, those thick, heavyweight vocals like caramel curdling in her throat. Then, slowly, carefully, she stalked her way down the stairs towards the crowd, a delighted panther in soon-to-be Anastacia staples: tinted glasses and a crop top to show off her olive-skinned midriff.

But as soon as she finished belting out what would go on to become her second single, “Not That Kind”, she turned shy. She pulled on her cardigan and looked at the floor – not yet the self-assured powerhouse who named her own genre (“sprock”, some elemental hybrid of soul, pop, and rock). Just a year later, in 2000, she would release her debut album, and rise, hot on the heels of Christina Aguilera, as the first diva of the new millennium.

But back then, Anastacia Lyn Newkirk had reason to be on edge. The 30-year-old was pretending to be 24, as instructed by the people running the contest, who desperately wanted her on the show – no-over-29s policy be damned. Then there’s the fact she had been singing that same song for years before appearing on The Cut, but labels hadn’t understood it or her. “I was so unsignable until that show,” a radiant 56-year-old Anastacia tells me. (The age is real these days – keeping up that ruse was exhausting, she says.)

Today she’s sat – tiny at 5ft 2in, which makes no sense given That Voice and unfiltered personality – in full glam, bling and, of course, tinted glasses, in her publicist’s office in King’s Cross. It’s the 25th anniversary of Not That Kind, which featured debut single “I’m Outta Love” – the song that instantly broke Anastacia in Europe and made her inescapable on music video channels for a decade. To celebrate, she’s releasing a special vinyl edition and embarking imminently on an extensive UK and Europe anniversary tour.

Everything music executives wanted in a pop star, Anastacia was told she lacked. “I wasn’t feminine enough. I wasn’t white enough, I wasn’t Black enough,” she says, widening her eyes sarcastically. This odd assessment is as undercooked as she thinks it is because, over in this part of the world, Anastacia is one of the most recognisable pop vocalists of the 21st century. Here, she’s almost on a par with Shakira, the unconventional pop star who did manage to break America – if Shakira had spent her teenage years in New York and sung about kissing cowboys and paying her dues. In fact, Anastacia’s red carpet moments in the early 2000s rivalled her Colombian counterpart, by way of push-up bras, statement belts and low-rise leather trousers.

Even more bewildering to the industry than Anastacia’s appearance was when she opened her mouth. “When I would sing, people would give an appearance where they looked a little constipated; their face would be confused because what they were hearing and seeing was wild.” She does an impression, her beautiful face strained, tongue lolling. Anastacia loves impressions; there are dozens to come, each as enjoyable as the last.

After The Cut, everyone wanted to sign her. She describes it as a “feeding frenzy” when labels realised that her differences were an asset. In hindsight, “Not That Kind” was the perfect introduction to Anastacia: a freaky, funky jam about being far from your average, not to be underestimated – a track that her voice could use as a gymnasium.

“I don’t sound like Celine. I’ve tried,” she says now, as she leans back in her chair and starts to sing like Celine Dion (in fairness she sounds very much like Anastacia doing an impression of the power ballad queen). “I tried to sound like Mariah.” Off she goes as Mariah. “I couldn’t sound like anyone I wanted to sound like. So, when I sang my songs, it was, ‘This is who I am.’”

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On everything she’s released – and that includes a German translation album and a rock covers record featuring what else but “Best of You” by Foo Fighters and “Wonderwall” – genre is irrelevant, a mere backdrop for that voice. “I do these things, make these sounds – I don’t know why,” she says curiously. Such sounds have made Anastacia a staple karaoke artist (if you haven’t howled “Left Outside Alone” after being made redundant, you’re missing out). “Anyone in the bar can totally exaggerate what I do,” she agrees, and starts wailing “I’m Outta Love”, overemphasising the vowels: “Aaaahmm Outta Loerrve…yaaayuh.”

Reflecting back 25 years, she remembers that time as a whirlwind: “I was just taken up the ladder really fast, from an unemployment check to a seven-album deal.” Elton John was an early fan, bringing her on stage at Madison Square Garden in 2000. At the end of their song together, he knelt down and kissed her on the belly button, a memory that remains, she tells me, one of the best moments of her life.

“When he lives for someone musically, he promotes them like they’re the best thing since sliced bread,” she laughs. Apparently, he told all his friends to buy her debut album. “He’s a perfectionist and a friend to the end,” she says, adding that he supported her fiercely during both of her two cancer battles. “He calls me a fat cow. It’s so good...”

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Their friendship was something of a full circle moment for Anastacia, who, as a child growing up in Chicago, had to wear corrective colour glasses for her poor eyesight. “Elton John always made me feel like I’m cool too if I wear glasses. My mom said I did this when she told me I had to wear them,” she says, and gives a big fist-pump.

In every photoshoot and music video, Anastacia would wear glasses of various shades and colours, despite frequently being asked to take them off. No one on a magazine cover wore glasses, she remembers. She would tell photographers: “If you had to take off your pants, would you be comfortable? That’s how I feel. You wanna see my eyes, but I wanna see you too. If that’s going to make a difference, then we don’t have a photoshoot.” I tell her that for bespectacled girls growing up in the Noughties, when glasses were nerd-coded, her insistence was a relief. It’s not the first time she’s heard that, she tells me, smiling.

Anastacia was a smash hit in Europe and in various countries across the world, but in America, she remained a B-lister who couldn’t get radio play no matter how hard her first label, Sony Music, tried. Her team believed it stemmed from a strange conflict between the radio industry suits and Sony.

Still, Sony did everything they could, even getting her a spot on VH1’s Divas Las Vegas in 2002. Appearing alongside Cher and Whitney Houston, Anastacia opened the show duetting with Celine Dion. “That was the label pushing me everywhere in America they could,” she says. But she was there as a diva? “I was marketed as just as good as [a diva], right? And I was really grateful because I felt like ‘the nobody’ in the show. Who sings with Celine? This girl!” (For what it’s worth, Anastacia is now, unequivocally, a legitimate diva: “If the drag queens are doing you, you’ve reached your icon; the higher precipice of being a diva.”)

That anonymity in America must have shielded her from the tabloid exposure that plagued her pop peers like Christina and Britney. “It protected me from a lot,” Anastacia agrees. “I didn’t look at it as protection at the time; I was disappointed. I felt deflated because the only way I know success is America. The rest of the countries, I didn’t really even understand because I didn’t have money to travel. Going overseas was going to another planet for me.” While she’s now based in Colorado, she’s spent a lot of time in Europe, living in London for years. “I’m so much wiser to humanity in a different way by being able to have so many countries that I can call home,” she says.

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It’s rare, though, that someone of her specific female daytime TV celebrity – something of an anglophile, Anastacia has done Strictly and is a semi-regular guest on Loose Women – has had such a positive relationship with the press. The biggest betrayal? An article that ran with a quote she said about not listening to music at home (she often prefers silence so she can think and be present). “They literally took it to mean that Anastacia doesn't listen to any music,” she says, suddenly serious.

Throughout her career, Anastacia has been open to being known, sharing intimate struggles before sharing intimate struggles had cultural cache. She suffered from serious health struggles, including Crohn's disease and cancer, twice. And when she got Botox, she spoke about loving it, then going too far and having to rein it in. “I’m so glad I started at 35, I will say,” she laughs. “Now I get what I call baby Botox, which is just enough, and then after the tour I’ll see what it looks like: ‘OK, maybe I’ll take a little more’ but just enough to make you feel like your smile lines aren’t as deep.”

As for the Ozempic trend, she believes each to their own. “If people want to, they want to, but I don’t want people to hurt themselves either,” she says, measured but not holding back her opinion. “Back in the day, we didn’t have that. We’d throw fingers down our throat [or] they’d eat toilet paper to fill their stomachs, so right now, everyone’s stabbing themselves with a needle. There’s always a way to fit the role.” She laughs thinking about how today it’s all about being skinny, but yesterday everyone wanted curves and a big butt. “Get to know yourself prior to doing something too changey, too irreversible,” she advises the younger generation. “Be careful [not] to follow the fad, because the fad changes a lot.”

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After a well-publicised marriage to her bodyguard in 2007, and a divorce three years later, she no longer talks about her relationships publicly. “Not that I’m offended when anybody asks,” she says warmly. “So much of my life is out there that I figure I’m gonna keep that one to myself. Sometimes I’m in one, sometimes I’m out of one. I’m really in a good place but I’m always in a good place whether or not I have a relationship these days. In order for somebody to be in my life, they have to make me happy.”

Over the years Anastacia has spoken about wanting to have children but not being able to. She became a stepmother when she got married, which she thought worked out perfectly. She had tried “desperately” to get pregnant, and it didn’t organically happen. Since money wasn’t an issue, she’d also considered surrogacy and adoption but decided against it. “I got to a place where to not have children and to choose to not have them was OK,” she says, adding with a laugh that hundreds of fans tell her she’s their mother.

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Technically, together with her sister Shawn, Anastacia is a co-parent to her brother Brian, whose autism essentially makes him “permanently young”. “The world gave me a bigger idea [of motherhood] than I ever thought I’d get. So yay, universe, thank you,” she says. “And I didn’t have to get preggo? That’s so awesome. It’s kind of a win-win, but I didn’t know that at the time. You got through the arcs, and you have that yearning as a girl. I had the yearning for a wedding, I had a yearning for kids…”

There’s very little Anastacia has left to do in this world; she’s in great spirits as she approaches these anniversary shows. She wants to wow her fans for as many years as possible with that caramel-coated voice of hers. She wants to be Tom Jones, swinging his hips, singing “Sex Bomb”; she wants to be a Lulu. “I want to be out there and be like, ‘Shout, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, shout!’ Let’s see what happens in 10 years. These aren’t easy notes to sing.”

When Anastacia asks, cackling with her head thrown back, if meeting her is everything I dreamed of, I have to concede that it is. “I always say to my sister, ‘If you feel like it’s not –” she says, slicing a finger across her throat to signal busted vocals. “I’ll tap out very gracefully and with humility. I’m fine with it.” And with that, Anastacia takes a dramatic, enormous, seated bow with a flourish of a bejewelled hand, bidding her audience adieu.

The 'Not That Kind' 25th anniversary tour is on now; 'Not That Kind' anniversary vinyl is on sale via Sony Music, out 11 April 2025