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DINA'S READY...

... To put her career right back on track. Still waiting: Chris Wells.

Dina Carroll is utterly gorgeous, sings like an angel and once sold more records than any other UK female vocalist. So... er, how come her career's been stuck on pause for the past two years?

Since '99 we've been waiting for Dina's big third album. After a first set, So Close, that sold a million and a half and a follow-up, Only Human, which turned platinum - not to mention a Europe-wide tour that went on for over a year - the likeable daughter of an American airman and Scottish mother had seemingly made the pop-soul queen's throne all her own. Moving up to London from Cambridge she looked all set to launch a third album that would have cemented her place amongst pop's elite well into the new century. Until suddenly it ground to a halt.

Dina seems as mystified as I when we get to discussing the reasons why: "It's very frustrating," she admits. "I do know that I lost my own direction after the second album and so I really put myself in the company's hands for the third. But after all the success and with all the money involved it became so political, I became a commodity. The creativity went out of the window and it felt like... someone ordering pizzas instead of making music."

What happened was this. Mercury Records sent Dina off to work with American production big dog, Rhett Lawrence. Between them artist and producer took so long to record and mix the album that, by the time it was ready to release, mainstream music had left them behind. Actually it had moved on so far and so fast that Dina didn't want to release the tracks at all and told Mercury so. For a while they sought to salvage the operation by means of remixes and reworks, but then they too came around to realising the truth of the matter: that the project was headed for the bin. It was an expensive mistake to make.

"Yes, it was," acknowledges Dina, with typical honesty. "But it was definitely the right move. The record label was really only wasting more money trying to put things right." Now they're both attempting to make a little of it back by releasing The Very Best Of Dina Carroll, an album that includes two new tracks, one of which, Dina's version of Van Morrison's Someone Like You (from the Bridget Jones's Diary soundtrack) is also a single. But we're talking stepping stones here: Dina's real musical plan ought to take her in another direction by the beginning of next year. "I've found that since recording the single quite a few writers and musicians have been asking to work with me," says Dina. "For a while when I came to London that kind of networking thing dried up: people seemed to forget that I could sing, or at least they didn't see me as that kind of artist. But when I was in the studio doing Someone Like You a lot of the musicians who heard me left saying, 'We'll definitely be spreading the word, 'cause we just don't get to work with real singers anymore'. I'll certainly be writing more on my next album, definitely taking more creative control over my career from now on."

Do Mercury know about this?

"They will when this comes out!"