MORE than 30 years after it's release Criticize is one of those songs you can stick on at a wedding that's guaranteed to get people of a certain age on the dancefloor.

So popular is Alexander O'Neal's 1987 hit I've even heard a version that turns his tale of a nagging ex-lover into a Hillbilly hoedown complete with fiddle solo and harmonica.

The song made O'Neal a household name with its parent album, Hearsay, going on to sell millions across the world and establishing the American-born soul singer as one of the true stars of '80s pop music with no less than five of its singles becoming top 40 hits in the UK.

Now three decades on, the 64-year-old has been celebrating Hearsay's success with a 50 date UK tour as well as working on his first original studio album for 15 years - the blues tinged Resurrected.

"Everything is going pretty much to plan," says O'Neal, who plays Wrexham William Aston Hall in November. "I'm just working on the album and getting the new material ready and I'm really excited.

"I'm probably going to play a couple of new songs and try to fit them into my regular set list but really it's about performing all my great songs like Criticize and Fake and I'm really looking forward to coming to Wrexham because I don't think I've been there before."

At the height of his success, visiting Wrexham was probably the last thing on the singer's mind, especially when he was playing six consecutive nights at Wembley Arena in 1989, earning a reputed £130,000 a night and revelling in the UK success of Hearsay.

"Revisiting the album was a challenge," he admits, 30 years later. "At first I was apprehensive about doing it because I knew people would compare how I sound now to how I did back then. But it was a challenge we took on and I think we achieved what we wanted to achieve."

The album eventually went four times platinum on this side of Atlantic where the singer was to become more popular than he was in his native country.

"I think Hearsay was successful probably because it was more of a concept album," he says about the collection which was loosely set around the attendees of a house party being hosted by O'Neal. "The party theme, all the talking and the interludes made it it stand out at the time when the album came out and it was very different. Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was a huge influence and for me he pretty much was the definition of our art which is hardcore rhythm and blues which is what I do. Marvin's album was talking about all the different things that were going on the world, but what I did with Hearsay was to try to describe a lot of the things that go on in a relationship - both good and bad."

Raised in rural Mississippi, O’Neal has never forgotten how hard his mother worked as a maid to support him and his five siblings after his father died shortly before the singer was born. He recently confronted his past and wrote about his life growing up as a fatherless black man in the Deep South of America, and the racial hatred he saw every day, in his autobiography, All True, Man.

"It wasn't difficult because I wanted to do it," he says about writing the book. "I just wanted to describe my life. One thing about writing an autobiography is that you might not want to be truthful about everything you say, but I can honestly say everything in that book is true. Doing the book was very personal - you open your whole life up and somethings in the book are good and some are not so good - but that's what autobiographies are."

O'Neal escaped from the grinding poverty and hatred of Mississippi, making Minneapolis his home and in this more racially tolerant city he found his place, collaborating with Prince, before his breakthrough in 1985 with the hit Saturday Love.

"You learn how to get over those things but you never stop hurting," he says, when I ask him about his father who was working on a barge on the Mississippi River transporting gravel when he drowned. "You're always going to be wondering about it until the day you die - all the what ifs and whether I might have had a relationship with my father and what kind of relationship it might have been."

O'Neal speaks at length in the book about some of the things he witnessed growing up in the Deep South, including the time he saw a neighbour blown to bits in his car by a white supremacist’s bomb. What does he make of President's Trump America now he has moved to the UK permanently?

"Politics has never really played a part in my career," he says, cautiously. "What I do for a living is make people feel good or at least try to make them feel good and give them something positive to go away with.

"What's going in America has been going on for a long time, but now the sheets have been pulled off and everybody can really see it. Sometimes you've got to get outside America to see what's going on in America and lots of Americans never leave America."

Hearing that O'Neal now lives in Manchester where he can often be seen cycling in the city centre, comes as a bit of a shock for someone so associated with the distinctive sounds of US R&B, but he is quick to draw parallels between the North West and his home in the States.

"I live in Manchester because my manager and my producer are here but I also happen to love the city," he explains. "I really love Manchester and it's a wonderful place. The people are friendly - it's rainy and the weather is up and down but I like any weather as long as it's not snow like we get in Minneapolis.

"I still have a place there and that will always be home for me but I think Manchester is a lot like Minneapolis - the pace and the people and it's very cosmopolitan. A lot of great bands like Oasis and singers like Russell Watson come from here too and it's definitely a music city. I used to live in London but I'm really not missing it - I'm just loving Manchester."

In 2015 O'Neal took part in the Channel 5 reality series Celebrity Big Brother, but decided to leave the show after 15 days prompting a number of interviews where he spoke about his struggles with drug ­addiction and his devastation over the loss of his close friend Whitney Houston.

"In the music industry you're going to have your high points and your low points, but it's what you do when you're having those low points that shows your character as a person," he adds. "Do you make it worse or do you hang in there roll up your sleeves and get to work?

"I still get a buzz out of touring which is why I'm still working after 40 years. I'm a working class entertainer - that's what I do. I don't wait for royalties to come in - I go out and work to keep the lights on. I equate what I do to the guy who gets up five days a week and works in a factory - it's not that much different and as long as you stay grounded you're going to be ok."

Alexander O'Neal plays Wrexham William Aston Hall on Friday November 16. Box Office No: 0844 249 1000 / www.thewilliamastonhall.com/