Before Paloma Faith was a singer she was an actor, and before that she was a dancer. She also dabbled in being a life model, a magician's assistant, a ghost on a theme-park ride and a shopgirl for Agent Provocateur, but we'll come to that in a bit. Anyway, dancing was her first love and what she imagined she'd spend her life doing.  It was a blow, then, when the choreographer Darshan Singh Bhuller took her aside in college and said: "You know what your problem is?" It was a rhetorical question. "You're not very good, but you attract attention, so I have to make you a lead role even though you're not the best dancer. It's irritating, but you are blessed in a way."  It sounds like a deleted scene from Black Swan, but Faith cackles gleefully as she recounts the story a decade on; fortunately she has an armadillo's hide. About a year ago, she ran into Singh Bhuller again in an airport. He smiled and nodded his head. "I told you," he said. Faith concludes: "I feel that still exists – I'm not the best, I know that, and I don't take anything for granted because of it. I'm good at something, but I don't quite know what it is yet."  She's being modest of course. Both of Faith's albums – 2009's Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful? and Fall to Grace in 2012 – have gone double platinum, selling more than 600,000 copies each in the UK. When she first arrived on the scene, you worried she might be starved of oxygen alongside booming British female singer-songwriters such as Adele and Florence Welch. But Faith has shown formidable resilience and returns this month in stomping form with her third long-player, A Perfect Contradiction.  At the same time, you can see what the choreographer was getting at. Becoming famous was inevitable for Faith; it was just a matter of her working out in which field success would come. Even her name – she dropped her surname, Blomfield, long ago – is a celebrity's name, while her exuberant quiff, heavy make-up and flamboyant wardrobe turn heads wherever she struts. Today is no different: she walks into a room at the Soho House members' club – a place where you are supposed to act unimpressed by whoever's there – wearing a vintage 60s gingham suit, matching orange silk blouse and black boots, and everyone, to a man and woman, stares.  Faith, now 32, came to music relatively late, in her mid-20s. "I started singing because a friend said: 'You're going to be the frontwoman in my band.' They were doing 50s cover songs. I was like: 'How do you know I can sing?' And he said: 'I don't really care if you can or not.'"  What was the band called? "Paloma and the Penetrators," she replies, her voice Dickens meets Carry On.  Even before she started singing, Faith was aware that her style made her stand out. "It's never ever been anything else even when I wasn't famous," she says. "I must be an attention seeker. Or a show-off. I think I've always enjoyed being observed. When I look at my CV, the connecting point among all the things is being watched: life-drawing model – being observed; theatrical stuff – being observed; magician's assistant – I was being watched. Agent Provocateur – you don't walk around in that uniform without a certain amount of attention. And it's all to do with enjoying that. Before I was confident enough to sing in public, a lot of my performances were silent, with music or whatever. I didn't speak for a long time. I just liked being watched in silence."  She considers the psychological implications. "I haven't got to the bottom of it yet, but it's something inherent in me," she decides. "I feel comfortable being watched, I enjoy it. That sounds a bit kinky, doesn't it?"  Faith was taught to put together an outfit by her mother. She worked as a teacher and Faith was raised by her in Hackney, east London, after her parents separated when she was four. Every night before school, Faith's mother would lay her clothes out for the next day and explain to her daughter which colours went together and why, say, when you wore red trousers then a hat in a similar shade would complement it.  Do they dress alike now? "She's a bit more high-street and modern than I am," says Faith. "I prefer old-fashioned things and my mum's like: 'We fought hard in the 60s to get rid of all that!'"  Faith's look became more distinct in her teens, when she became curvier. "I looked up which point in time was suited to my figure and that's when I got into the 40s and 50s," she says. "People like Marilyn. She had the big bum, too." Her aesthetic is part of who she is now, so when the Observer's stylists suggested that she appear with minimal make-up wearing simple white dresses for this shoot, they received short shrift. "I was like: 'That's not gonna happen!' I'm not doing natural hair and make-up, ever. "  She's done talking about clothes now, so we move on. Last night Faith was out with her "new friend and absolute all-time favourite writer" Hanif Kureishi. They went to the opening of a George Condo exhibition at the Simon Lee Gallery in Mayfair and got a little drunk, and Kureishi gave her some advice for our conversation today. "He said: 'Why don't you start talking about things that interest you in interviews, rather than talking about boring questions like what you wear that do my head in?'"  Mentally scratching out half of my diligently prepared enquiries, I ask how she met Kureishi. Faith's answer gives a small insight into what a singular and unselfconsciously eccentric person she is. On New Year's Day 2013, she made a resolution to meet more people who inspired her. She'd been famous for a while by then and had thought that stimulating and exciting people would naturally topple into her path. It hadn't worked that way, so Faith decided to proactively seek them out. She had a hit list – "Hanif was at the top" – and started asking people if they knew anyone on it and could facilitate an introduction.  "So that's how I met Hanif," she concludes. "I don't know whether it's because I'm lacking a father figure, because I didn't grow up with my father. Well, my father and I don't really have a relationship. And I feel there's a lack of male guidance or something, and I really value the way that Hanif observes people, and I find his insight into women particularly fulfilling."  Growing up with her mother, and four aunts, Faith ended up adopting some unlikely male role models. Her first job, aged 14, was reviewing TV from a teenagers' perspective in the London Evening Standard. One column focused on how she wished the chat-show host Des O'Connor was her dad. "I've had that with other people, too," she says. "Like when I worked with Terry Gilliam on his film [2009's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus]: I felt very much that there was a space being filled by that – missing male guidance."  So, following Kureishi's recalcitrant advice, Faith is planning on being tougher with journalists, although she doesn't seem fully signed up to the teachings of her new mentor just yet. "I watched an interview recently that Hanif did with Alan Yentob and he said to me: 'I haven't seen it. How did I come across?' And I said: 'You come across as an arsehole.'" She giggles mischievously. "He was really upset!"  The problem is that Faith is a pleaser and a natural-born entertainer. "The expectation of the pop star is this person who needs to be quite jolly and uplifting," she says. "I love that role, because I like to lift people. I think that's a symptom of being an only child as well."  It's for this reason that Faith is especially pleased with her new record. Where her previous album, Fall to Grace, drifted at times towards melancholy, with tales of break-ups and disappointments, A Perfect Contradiction is a more life-affirming and brassy collection. The tone is set by the opening track, and first single, "Can't Rely on You", produced by Pharrell Williams. The collaboration happened because Williams sought out Faith at the 2013 Met Ball in New York, took her phone and keyed in his number. The fact that the "coolest man on earth" wanted to work with her seems to have given Faith a self-assured sass that runs through A Perfect Contradiction.  Faith says, "People always ask me: 'You seem so upbeat – why are your songs so miserable?' And I thought: 'You know what? They've got a point!' This time I wanted to show another side. When you first write these sad songs they are therapy because you've got something off your chest. But a year and a half later you're still picking a scab."  The scab, in the past, has often been problems with men. "In my life, I'm used to rejection and disappointment," says Faith. "In relationships I've had a lot of that." In that respect, too, things have taken a positive turn. In New York, where she wrote A Perfect Contradiction, she met her boyfriend and, a year later, the relationship is going strong. "It's the first time I've released an album with songs about the person on it and still been in a relationship with them when it came out. Which is weird to me, because I'll be playing and I'll look at him in the audience and we both know what it's about. Yeah, it's a happy ending."  Faith has to dash, off to record the Graham Norton Show, hoping that her hangover clears in time. "Luckily the song I've got is rhythm and blues, and they were all pissed when they wrote those songs," she says. "You need a bit of a grrrrrowl." Faith leaves, everyone pretends not to notice and fails, and the room suddenly seems a little darker.  A Perfect Contradiction is out now
Life model, magician's assistant, lingerie shop worker... Paloma Faith says she has always chosen jobs in which she gets to be watched. On the eve of her new album's release, Tim Lewis asks the English eccentric why she feels the need to show off