“All Around the World” – Single by Lisa Stansfield from the album Affection
B-side “Wake Up Baby” (7″) / “The Way You Want It” (12″)
Released 16 October 1989
Label Arista
Songwriters Lisa Stansfield, Ian Devaney, Andy Morris
Producers Ian Devaney, Andy Morris
Charted No.3 in US; No.1 in UK; No.2 in West Germany; No.1 in Greece; No.1 in Netherlands; No.1 in Spain; No.1 in Norway; No.2 in Italy.
This song about searching for a lost love is the biggest hit for Lisa Stansfield, a white soul singer from England. It was the first ever US R&B #1 hit by a white UK female, and topped the charts in about a dozen countries.
The spoken intro came about when Stansfield, her boyfriend Ian Devaney, and other band member Andy Morris were sitting around the piano. Andy played some chords and Lisa began talking in a low voice, in a Barry White way. They liked the way it sounded and put it on the record. Stansfield, Devaney and Morris are the writers on the track.
The “ya ya ya ya”s in the chorus were put in as a placeholder until Lisa could come up with real lyrics. The nonsense placeholder worked so well, however, that they left it in.
The accompanying music video of “All Around the World” was directed by Philip Richardson. It was nominated as Best New Artist in a Video on the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990. The video was later made available on Stansfield’s official YouTube channel in 2012 and had generated more than 75 million views as of February 2024.
The video opens with a close-up of Stansfield in black-and-white speaking the intro. As the song begins, the camera circle around Stansfield, now in colours. The backdrop is a world map. Her hair is very short, she wears red lipstick and her famous kiss curls. Next she sits outdoors in the rain, performing on the stairs in front of a house. Other scenes shows Stansfield singing, while she rotates in the middle of a ring of men standing next to each other as the camera follows her round. Towards the end, she stands in the rain and sings as the raindrops are falling on her face.
