The Screen behind the mirror

In 2008 Lisa-Lee released an additional limited edition album, titled, 'The Screen behind the mirror'. This was released with the debut opera album, 'Sola perduta abbandonata'. The reason for this release was to help the sales of the first album; 'The Screen behind the mirror' managed to sell 10,000 copies over three months, resulting in Lisa-Lee selling just over 30,000 records during 2008.

Some people thought that it was a strange title for an album, but it had a deeper meaning to Lisa-Lee, what is meant by it, is for people to not judge other people, don't think you know someone from what you see on the outside, because there is a screen behind every mirror, just like a person, there is more to them than what you see.

2009 turned out to be a very difficult year for Lisa-Lee, this was because the later part of 2008 was a tough year for Lisa-Lee, not within her career, that was going from strength to strength, but her private life was a different story. Lisa-Lee found out that her friends son was dying, he was only six years old, Lisa-Lee had seen him grow up, he had a difficult early life, but the hardest part was that the boys mother had a drink and drug problem, so she was unable to cope with her sons illness, so Lisa-Lee decided to nurse him during the last five months of his life.

Lisa-Lee grew very close to 'Ben', she said that she'd of done anything to take his pain away and cure him, but she couldn't, all she could do was be there for him, Lisa-Lee said that he was the bravest person she's ever met and had he of lived, she would of arranged to adopt him, but that wasn't possible. Ben died in Lisa-Lee's arms; the grief spilled over into Lisa-Lee's career, because during her only opera performance of 2009, a performance of Puccini's 'Madama Butterfly', she lost her voice, it was the final part of the opera, when Butterfly kills herself for her little boy to live!

Some people don't realise that in the final aria of 'Madame Butterfly'; Butterfly is singing goodbye to her little boy, telling him how much she loves him. The words had such a deep meaning to Lisa-Lee, this resulted in her completely losing her voice, it ended up taking Lisa-Lee two years to retrain herself to sing opera.

2009 kept getting worse for Lisa-Lee, she was chosen to perform in another Puccini opera, 'Tosca', but when the organises saw what Lisa-Lee looked like, they very rudely told her that she was far too ugly and way too fat, so she got sacked. The organisers chose a very pretty young women, who did a terrible performance; the critics hated it, so that brought Lisa-Lee some joy; although she wouldn't of been able to do the performance, as she had lost her voice.

Things took a nasty turn for Lisa-Lee during 2009, she had decided to lose weight, but while out walking Lisa-Lee fell on a used hypodermic needle, this meant that she had to have quite a few injections to protect herself, also she had to wait 12 weeks (3 months), to find out if she had contracted the HIV virus; it was highly unlikely that Lisa-Lee would of caught HIV but she still had to be tested to be 100% certain. The worry of the HIV re-awoken fears from Lisa-Lee's childhood, during her early years when she was abused by a group of paedophiles, they used to tell Lisa-Lee that they had infected her with HIV and she was going to die!

Lisa-Lee was going through a hugely stressful time, remembering past events that she had completely forgotten, she was having panic attacks and bad nightmares, when she could sleep, so she eventually went to a counsellor and was told that she was suffering from, 'post traumatic stress disorder' (PTSD). Through counselling Lisa-Lee got through it; not only was Lisa-Lee dealing with grief but she also had to relive her childhood ordeals and try to get her voice back, part of Lisa-Lee just gave up, she'd had enough and needed to take time to slowly build herself back up.

Lisa-Lee gave her most open interview to her local newspaper, 'The south Wales Evening post'. This was part of her recovery from 'PTSD', and it was a way of letting people know what she had been through, most people judged her and put her down without knowing anything about her. In this interview Lisa-Lee spoke openly about her memories of abuse, she told them how she was told that she had been infected with HIV and was going to die, and how they sold her to each other for 10p, and how they would sometimes strangle her until she almost passed out, just to show her that they could kill her if they wanted to.

To give Lisa-Lee time to recover her record company changed their release plans, they decided to put out another limited edition EP / album, this was only released in the UK and Ireland, to try to build up her profile and boost the sales of her debut opera album, as it was released free with it; the title of this release was, 'Almost nothing'. Lisa-Lee says that this is how she was made to feel by people; like she was almost nothing! Unfortunatley this release failed to be successful, but it was badly promoted, something out of Lisa-Lee's control.