SINGING superstar Gabrielle has opened her heart to Pulse about music, her new baby, involvement in a murder investigation and THAT famous eye patch.

Rather than being a gimmick, the lady currently riding high in the Top 40 with Give Me A Little More Time, says the patch was a way of covering up a lazy eyelid during her first few months of pop fame.

"I was due to go in and have an operation on my eye just as Dreams became a hit," she said. "An adviser suggested I wear the patch so that it would be easier for me when it came to doing face-to-face interviews. It would have been impossible for me to maintain proper eye contact without the patch." The pretty singer has now undergone surgery for the defect which has bothered her since birth but the latest pictures show she is still conscious of her looks and covers the eye with a long fringe.

She said: "Sometimes, especially when I am tired, I feel that my eye starts to drift again. Other people say it looks fine but I am still quite self-conscious about it. The eye patch was never a gimmick but I suppose I did become known for it."

Despite her bold looks, Gabrielle says she also used to worry about what other people thought about her work. Not any more.

"When I released my first album, I was so worried about what people wanted to hear that it ended up being a collection of all sorts of different sounds. There was a bit of dance and some soul but my new album is very different. "I asked friends what they thought of it and some said they didn't like Give Me A Little More Time. When that went on to be a hit, it made me realise that I should be more confident about my music and what I think.

"This album is very different. When it is released I hope I will no longer be known as Gabrielle the dance diva. And I'm pleased because I have always written and sung all my own material."

Music has been good to Gabrielle but the most wonderful thing in her life is her one-year-old son Jordan Lewis.

He will accompany her on when she sets out on her first ever string of live dates.

Surprisingly, until now Gabrielle has been almost exclusively a studio artist.

"I'm very excited about playing live and having my own band," she said.

"I have four dates lined up at Ronnie Scott's. I'm playing at the Jazz Cafe and doing two dates supporting M People.

"Jordan will be coming with me wherever possible. We haven't had to do too much travelling until now. "Before he was born I had all these ideas about finding a nanny and doing things properly. But when he came along I realised there was no-one I could ever trust with him.

"Fortunately I had my mum to fall back on and she's been wonderful. She is a qualified social worker and has taken a year off to help me out." However, motherhood hasn't softened the very strong outlook of a very tough woman.

She may be small but Gabrielle will not let anything stand in her way - and she vehemently hates the police.

Her opinion of the boys in blue didn't improve when detectives called her in to help with inquiries after an ex-boyfriend was accused of murder.

"I didn't realise it but they speak to everyone when a murder takes place," she said. "Unfortunately, people look at the words in the headlines - "Gabrielle" and "murder" - and don't take time to read the story.

"Luckily, they were nice enough to me and let me go after just a short space of time. But other people were kept for up to seven hours."

"The police are pigs and its one of those things."

And she looks so timid on the telly!

Gabrielle's new album is released later this month.

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