Lisa Stansfield

I don’t know where my baby is, said Lisa Stansfield in a deep, seductive tone. But I’ll find him someway, somehow. I’ve got to let him know how much I care. I’ll never give up looking for my baby. Thus began “All Around the World,” one of the best singles of the late ’80s and the greatest Barry White song the guy never recorded.

She’d never again reach that level of soul-gone-clubbing perfection, but the hits set Biography proves Stansfield came close on several occasions, mostly on other tracks from her debut disc, Affection. On later albums, Stansfield moved away from her unique cross-genre flavor. However, she always performed material that fit her emotionally subtle vocals perfectly.

Besides a stretch of singles from the five albums from 1989’s Affection through 2001’s Face Up (strangely omitting her 1999 jazz-chart success, Swing), Biography also rescues some welcome numbers from obscurity. “In All the Right Places,” which hits all the right slinky grooves, originated on So Natural, her never-released-domestically third record. The number was relegated in the States to the Indecent Proposal soundtrack. Then there’s “People Hold On,” her 1989 pre-“All Around the World” monster club-hit collaboration with Coldcut. By compiling these notable moments in Stansfield’s career, Biography offers more start-to-finish pleasure than any disc in her catalog but Affection.