In 1987, when Tiffany was a hugely famous pop singer, journalists always used to ask her the same question: “Where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?”

“And I wouldn’t know what to say,” says Tiffany. “I mean, 10 years before that I was six…”

Tiffany Darwish is now 48. If we hadn’t been introduced, I don’t know that I would have recognised her. When we meet pre-lockdown, though her hair is still red, it’s sleeker. Her eyes are still a sparky dark brown. She’s a gorgeous American rock chick: perfect teeth and skin, jangling bracelets and rings, black ripped jeans, studded boots, sleeveless fur-lined gilet.

She fits in with her surroundings – a band rehearsal studio – though we are not in LA, but Brighton. Tiffany’s current co-writer, Mark Alberici, is British, and she and her band are working up a couple of songs before their trip to Wales in a couple of days, to record her 11th album at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth.

Though she’s had a few years falling in and out of music, Tiffany is now determined when it comes to her career. “I’d go away and then I’d think: ‘You know what? This is not good enough. I love music and I want to do this, and I’d be happy playing rock festivals, you know, the shit spots when everyone’s parking the car.’”

Winning over audiences is what Tiffany does. In 1987, when she was 16, she became known for touring the shopping malls of 16 cities in the US, belting out her song I Think We’re Alone Now over its high-energy backing track; smiling and dancing and flipping her hair as other teenagers gawped at her, in that love-you-hate-you teenage way.

In this instant-access age, such a door-to-door sales technique seems laughable, but it worked: I Think We’re Alone Now was a massive, bona fide hit. It went to No 1 in the US and the UK as well as other countries, and catapulted Tiffany to fame. The accompanying album, Tiffany, went quadruple-platinum in the US, and her next, Hold an Old Friend’s Hand, which came out the following year, went platinum, making her the youngest ever person to go to No 1 in the States with their first two LPs. With such all-conquering, never-repeated success at such a young age, it’s tempting to see her life as downhill from then, but that would not be correct. Tiffany is more than her early past. “I’ve done what I thought would make me grow and make me happy,” she says. “If I could go back, I would try to be more pro-Tiff, believe in myself.”

I quickly learned how to work a crowd. By the age of 12, I was getting that down

I Think We’re Alone Now wasn’t Tiffany’s own composition, but a cover of a Tommy James and the Shondells hit, found for her by George Tobin. Tobin was Tiffany’s manager, and an almost hilariously cliched one: a dominant, abrasive, controlling know-all. TV interviews with Tiffany at that time would feature the 44-year-old Tobin sitting next to her, introduced as her producer. Which he was, along with being her manager, her stylist, her songwriter and arranger and the director of her pop videos. He was in charge of everything Tiffany did (for 50% of her royalties after expenses, which she paid, and 20% of her non-royalty revenue) and, famously, he encouraged her to seek legal emancipation from her family in a hugely public lawsuit when she was 17. The petition did not entirely succeed, and Tiffany went to live with her granny.

When we talk about this, Tiffany is philosophical. “George is a New York guy,” she says, “and he’s old Motown: if you’re not adding to the situation, please take a seat in the hallway.” Plus, her life before meeting Tobin had not been easy. Her mum and dad split up when she was 14 months old, and when her mother found another partner, things didn’t get much smoother: her mum was an alcoholic, her stepfather very strict. Tiffany, as the oldest child, was often more responsible than the adults around her. Still, her stepdad pushed Tiffany, recognising her talent and wangling her first paid gig. “Yeah, I remember it,” she says. “I was nine years old, awkward on a stage full of adults, who sometimes were fully pissed, and were playing the wrong chords. And I had to find my way – and it’s live – in front of an audience. So I quickly learned how to work a crowd. By the age of 12, I was getting that down.”

So, she doesn’t regret trying to legally break away from her immediate family, but she does regret the public nature of the case. Her lawyers were expensive and persistent. “It was in their favour to keep the mudslinging going,” she says. “They weren’t doing anything wrong, but they were getting all this information, things that I definitely didn’t want out there. Times that my parents had fought outside the house in the yard, and the neighbour witnessed, and then all that is in court.” A few months after the case, just before her 18th birthday, she bought her own house: Chuck Norris’s old property in the Lemon Heights neighbourhood of Tustin, California. (Norris and Tiffany became friends and he took her to Thai boxing tournaments.)

Tiffany thinks that her family background made her mature for her age, and her interviews back then reveal her as polite but quizzical, centred. Not a diva, and not as eager to be liked as, say, Kylie. She still retains a so-it-goes attitude. “Real life always gets in the way,” she says, though now her real-life problems aren’t court cases but the lack of hot water in her Airbnb: “I had to boil the kettle to wash my hair!” she wails.

Tiffany has had an enduring connection with the UK. Her second marriage was to an Englishman, and they lived for a while in Cannock, near Birmingham, before moving to Nashville. And over the past couple of years, she’s spent quite some time in, of all places, Basingstoke. Her friend Tina, who’s American, lives there. They met when Tiffany was 14. “She’s made a room for me in her home with a nice bath, my little Zen cave. I’ve been going back and forth now for, gosh, two years.”

Tiffany’s music these days is rock and country. She has a lovely, throaty voice, with range and warmth, made for songs about being on the road and leaving her troubles behind. It’s taken a while for her to recognise this, though, and her singing career has been remarkably varied. Her 10 albums flip from genre to genre: pop, rock, country, even Eurodance (2005’s Dust Off and Dance).

Tiffany performing on TV in 1987. Photograph: Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

Her fifth album, 2000’s The Color of Me, was widely admired, but her then label failed to capitalise on its critical success, and she confesses that she didn’t always know how best to progress. So over the years, she’s tried any number of side hustles. She had her son Elijah, now a 27-year-old structural engineer, when she was 21, and deliberately took a step back from music in order to bring him up. She opened a clothes shop in Nashville, did a bit of acting, and spent several years on the celebrity TV circuit, appearing on everything from Celebrity Wife Swap, Celebrity Cook-Off, Celebrity Fit Club and Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling.

In 2018, she took part in the Aussie version of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here and while out in the jungle had a sort of epiphany. She hadn’t felt as though she fitted in – she didn’t really know who anyone else was on the show – and was voted out first. “But from my bunk I could see the stars and the moon,” she says, “and I used to look up every night. It was like my rehab. I really had to melt myself down. I knew that was my time, before I was going on this journey, before the Pieces of Me tour.”

Her last album, 2018’s Pieces of Me, moved her into a life both new and old. She was separating from her husband, learning to write songs that she liked, getting back into music. She toured the album hard, and found a connection with “my old mall fans: the women that are raising children on their own, or had some hard knocks, or going back into the workforce, or sitting home and going: ‘I’ve just totally lost myself. I don’t know where I am.’ My music is speaking to them, and they’re coming to shows, and it’s great. It’s awesome to see my music liberate them a little bit.”

Her mall fans have grown up, as has she. Today, what Tiffany is about is the determination and self-expression of the middle-aged woman. “We put ourselves last,” she says. “But I’m like, ‘No.’ I’m tired of pleasing people all the time. It hurt me in the long run, really. I don’t want us to grow old. I don’t want us to give up on ourselves. Yes, be the best mom or, sister, wife, whatever you’re doing, but not at the expensive of not knowing yourself. You’ve got to live your life. It’s supposed to be a full life.”