THE turn of the year marks the return of Alison Moyet to the live circuit on her first tour in three years.

The 22 dates will put her latest album in the spotlight after the Essex blues diva released The Turn last October, her first set of original songs since Hometime in 2002.

"For so many reasons, I've given the new album that title, " says Alison, who plays the Grand Opera House, York, on Tuesday evening.

"First, The Turn is an affectionate name that I have with my fan base on my website; second, it's like a magical term for turning something ordinary into something extraordinary; and the third reason, the salient one, is the slightly tragic factor, that you're a turn at 46 and still have to explain yourself, and so there's a kind of resilience and self-confidence you need.

"You think about those people who did those variety shows at the turn of the 20th century, putting on a face, and regardless of what was going on around them, they still had to make out they were having the best day ever."

Alison may have sold 20 million records in a career stretching back to Yazoo's Only You in April 1982, but there have been ups and downs, not least an eight-year struggle to free herself from her contract with Sony.

"It's incredibly frustrating why it's so difficult in this business, " she says.

"I was on Sony for God knows how many years and had outlived however many managing directors, and yet some young buck with no idea of who you are tells you how to make a record.

"The most offensive was when one MD said I should make the kind of record that I knew even he wouldn't listen to, and I thought, 'Do you think that celebrity drives me and all I want is fame?'.

"The thing that kept me going, beyond the accidental pop hits, was that I was an artist and I always have been an artist, and whether I have an audience or not, that's what I do - and yes, of course I'd prefer to have an audience for validation."

Alison picks out one particular low point.

"I remember recording Weak In The Presence Of Beauty, where I felt ashamed to be singing it. Everyone was cheering another success, and I had to put my A&R hat on because I knew it would be a hit the single made number six in April 1987, but then they wanted another and I knew I was cementing myself into a genre, " she says.

"It was a perfectly nice cover version but I knew it wasn't right for me. It didn't move me."

There always will be a battle between a company's desire for commercial success and a musician's creatively.

"At the end of the day, people seem to judge your best songs as being the ones that made you the most money, but I know my best songs are the ones I recorded in the last ten years, " Alison says.

"You can only do things that mean something to you.

You must stay stimulated and you have to keep doing things that excite you."

Since parting company with Sony, Alison has sustained both forms of fulfilment, despite an eight-year recording hiatus following the release of Essex in 1994.

Hometime went gold in 2002 and earned her a BRIT award nomination, while her second album for Sanctuary, Voice, reached the Top Ten in 2004 on its way to selling more than 250,000 copies.

Voice was an album of covers, set to understated yet lush arrangements by Anne Dudley, and Alison largely eschewed the predictable - Cry Me A River aside - in favour of Henry Purcell's Dido's Lament, Elvis Costello's Almost Blue and God Give Me Strength and even two French chansons.

"I knew there would be elements that would say, 'What a move, to do a covers album', but above all I am a voice. No one would say a great cellist shouldn't play Bach, and I wanted to use my voice. They were great songs that I wanted to sing, and with everything I sing, I will learn something, " says Alison.

The difficulty lies in persuading people to "look beyond the concept of what popular music should be.

"They're so into R & B they get confused by a straight melody, " she says.

"I learnt so much from doing Voice: to not be afraid of melody, but music has become so focused on beats and grooves that people have forgotten about great melodies with intelligent lyrics."

Alison had made her stage debut in the West End in Chicago in 2001, playing Matron 'Mama' Morton.

"Growing up postpunk, I'd never been interested in musical theatre, but when I heard those songs, I thought, 'I could sing those', and what a fantastic left turn it was for me? but sadly after that they had any old rock star doing Chicago."

The same casting policy appeared to apply to The Vagina Monologues, which Alison declined.

"I've resisted doing that show; I found it middle class, triumphantly using the 'C' word, which we'd used in Basildon when I was 13, " she scoffs.

"I thought it was so fey; the show felt patronising and didn't seem relevant to me."

Alison returned to the theatre stage to star alongside Dawn French in 2006 in Smaller, and she wrote three songs for the show too: Home, "the one with the accordion"; the title number; and World Without End, a hymn.

Subsequently, she recorded the songs for The Turn, her first recording for the W14 label.

"Again people think is an album of show songs because of Smaller, but those three were written as songs in a play, and the show wasn't a musical, " Alison says.

Analysing how her songwriting has progressed since her days as Alf in Yazoo, she says: "I've always been interested in people watching and studying relationships, and that doesn't just mean sexual. What has changed is it's now 46 years of experience, not 21, when you sing about what you imagine love is, " she says.

"At 46, you understand relationships; the ennui, the withholding, the cutting off the nose to spite the face.

"There's this thinking that you're immured to passion by the time you're in your forties, but we're the generation that more than anyone has had a fully developed education in music and we've seen the biggest changes culturally, and I just find it strange that we're not expected to reflect that in our songs."

Sure enough, Alison Moyet does reflect those changes on The Turn, an album that delves into the pathos, drama and spills of life.

  • Alison Moyet, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm. Tickets: £25 on 0870 606 3595.