Eighties pop legend left hallucinating as terrifying health battle forces tour change

A 1980s pop legend has been forced to postpone some of her tour dates after a health scare.

As the conspicuous consumption of the 1980s shaded into the more introspective Nineties, a wave of female singer-songwriters - from Tasmin Archer to Tanita Tikaram - exploded onto the UK charts.

But while many of her contemporaries have faded away, Happy Ever After hitmaker Julia Fordham has lasted the course, maintaining a loyal fanbase that sees her pack out theatres whenever she tours.

She grew that fanbase dramatically with the Woman To Woman project, which saw her recording and touring alongside stars Beverley Craven and Judie Tzuke.

So it was with some optimism that Julia embarked on a massive 13-date UK tour, perhaps her biggest ever in support of hew new album Earth Mate. But the tour was nearly ended before it began after Julia was struck down by a case of Covid that left her "hallucinating."

The Hampshire-born singer's distinctive voice, which can soar from velvety lows to diamond-sharp highs in an instant, was silenced by the bug. "It wasn't Covid-lite," she told The Express. "It was Covid-smack-you-in-the-face."

She had "no voice," and was left flat on her back. "I was hallucinating, and seeing white streaming lights," she continued. "I guess I must have been feverish... I had a sort of drifting out-of-body experience."

Julia admitted that she considered soldiering on and trying to get through the shows drawing on technique alone, but realised that she'd be potentially spreading the particularly nasty strain of the virus around the country if she did.

The tour's opener - an appearance at the Nantwich Words and Music festival - had to be replaced with a new date on November 25, and sold-out gig at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall was left on a knife-edge, with the threat of cancellation lingering until the eleventh hour.

But with a little last-minute rescheduling, the tour is now more-or-less back on track and she says she's very excited about giving the new album - her fifteenth - the exposure it deserves.

While Julia admits she has in the past been a victim of he own diverse tastes - with albums that have taken in jazz, latin and folk - Earth Mate shares a lot of DNA with her early breakthrough records. "I don't want to imply it's a return to the first album," she stressed, "but it is curious that the guys who are playing the bulk of the songs are the guys who were on the tour for that first album."

"I think people are looking for a connection back to that first album but the playing is very different, where we're all at now, because there's a maturity that comes from the years that have passed."

Julia adds that, while she understands how fans can be attached to early recordings that soundtracked their youth, such as Porcelain and Love Moves In Mysterious Ways, she's not solely interested in looking backwards. She goes on to name-check a number of new young artists, such as Chappell Roan and Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso who are exciting her today.

She expresses sympathy for young artists trying to build a career in music today, in a world where streaming revenues are a mere shadow of the money artists made in the 1980s: "It's such a different machine to the one that I was launched from," she says.

But despite changing times, and a pandemic that won't quite go away, it doesn't look as if Julia could ever be stopped.