Age of Reason

MELANIE C is feeling under the weather when the Evening Press comes a'calling.

Not because the tabloids have been making mischief with stories of disappointing sales for her Reason album and tour, but because she has been celebrating the night before.

"I'm a little below par with a cold after yesterday, as Liverpool beat Man Utd in the Worthington Cup final. I thought, 'If I don't watch, they'll probably win' - and they did!" says the Liverpool nut.

Despite that cold - no doubt long gone since the interview was conducted well ahead of her tour starting - Melanie Chisholm sounds as Scouser-perky as she did when she was dubbed the Sporty one in the Spice Girls.

On Tuesday that tour arrives at York Barbican Centre, where she last played in buoyant mood on the night of another Liverpool triumph, that time in the UEFA Cup Final, in May 2001.

Reason, her March follow-up to 1999's multi platinum-selling solo debut Northern Star, is similarly upbeat on such tracks as On The Horizon, Positively Somewhere, Let's Love and potential single Yeh, Yeh, Yeh.

Here It Comes Again, the new album's first single, has already made the Top Ten, continuing a success story that has seen Melanie C outsell Mel B, Emma Bunton, yoga-loving Geri Halliwell and Queen Victoria Beckham since the Spice Girls went the way of all manufactured pop acts. Not that she is gloating. "I've never felt that I was in competition with the other girls. I think any one of them would tell you that, during the time we were in the band, I was the one who was most serious about her music and the most driven."

So driven that she recorded Northern Star in the immediate aftermath of the final Spice Girls tour, revelling in the freedom. "To find that so many people wanted to work with me, I just went crazy...mental!" Melanie recalls.

"I so loved the whole process of making a record that was all about me and my tastes, and which didn't have to be put together by committee."

For two years, she toured the world, notching up 124 gigs and festival performances: more than the Spice Girls achieved in their entire career. There were two number one singles in the UK too: Never Be The Same Again, co-written with TLC's Lisa Left Eye Lopez, in April 2000 and I Turn To You four months later, to complement the Top Four successes of Goin' Down and title track Northern Star the year before.

Touring complete, Melanie returned to London in September 2001 and initially planned to chill out, but the singer and composer within her would not switch off, and by November she was back in the studio, writing songs.

"Having taken a couple of months off, I was getting a bit twitchy, but it went really well once I was in the studio, and one of the first things I did was Here It Comes Again, the single," she says.

Travelling back and forth between London and Los Angeles over 15 months, she worked with songwriting collaborators Rick Nowels, Gregg Alexander, Tore Johansson, Rhett Lawrence, Phil Thornalley and former Blow Monkeys front man Dr Robert Howard. Production credits were equally diverse: Nowels, Alexander, Johansson and Lawrence, plus Marius de Vries, Peter Vettesse, Pat McCarthy, Damian Le Gassick and Gary Clark.

"Doing an album over 15 months gives you time to record it as you want, and I didn't want to rush things. It's also nice to have time out of the limelight to resume your personal life," says Melanie, "So before this tour starts, I want to spend some quality time for a few weeks with my boyfriend."

She revels in working in both London and LA. "Where I work really depends on who I'm working with, but I do love working in LA, especially when I'm making an album," she says. "People often ask me 'Do you think it would sound different if you did it all in America?' but you record anywhere and get whatever sound you want."

The song, not its route to a record, nor its production, matters most. "There are so many ways to describe the things that you do, but at the end of the day it's just music, and people either like it or they don't," she says.

Reason is both a pop and rock record, balancing the adrenaline punch of Yeh, Yeh, Yeh and Let's Love with the more contemplative title track. "I think the album offers up a pretty accurate reflection of who I am and where I'm at now," Melanie says. "It's generally positive, which is the way I'm trying to go these days. It says I've found myself in what is generally a good place, but I still have my moments of darkness and insecurity - as, I think, everyone does. In that sense, I hope people will be able to identify with it and with me."

With Melanie "generally in a good place", The Spice Girls have been consigned to history. "It was impossible to have any privacy in that time but it was a fantastic experience all the same," she says. "It was an amazing, amazing ride. I can't say I enjoyed every minute of it; I can't say I loved every song we did, but it was just an out-of-this-world experience, something incredible to have been part of."

Media talk of a reunion was sparked by the Spice women meeting up for a much publicised girlie supper. "We did get together to have dinner but the agenda was definitely not work, just to get together as friends," Melanie insists. "The speculation about a world tour and album is just not true...I'm not going to succumb to pressure. I think it's naff when you see these bands re-form, and who in their right mind would want to get together again? Not me!"

Instead, Melanie's idea of a perfect day is a nice lazy Sunday morning, followed by a walk or a run, then quiet lunchtime drinks in a pub and back home for Coronation Street. Pop stardom does not allow such days every Sunday but, at 27, she has adjusted to its demands: "As I'm getting older, I'm more accepting of myself, but there are still things that upset me."

Such as? "There was this article that said I'd stretched the album cover picture. I may have put on a little weight since then but I just don't want to add to the situation," she says. "I've been a victim of it before."

She does, however, finish the interview on a high note, as she looks forward to playing live. "I love performing: that's my reason for being and that's why I wrote Reason as I just wanted to celebrate that."

Melanie C, plus Liko, York Barbican Centre, April 29, doors open at 7pm. Tickets update: still available at £17.50.

Updated: 10:38 Friday, April 25, 2003