Estelle shows all her range on 'All of Me'

Estelle can't explain what came over her when singer-songwriter Akon first played "Thank You" for her.

"I just knew I was having a very strong reaction to it," the Grammy-winning singer says, calling from a tour stop in San Diego. "My heart was racing. I needed some air. I heard this song, and my heart started beating out my chest. I didn't know what it was. I started bawling, and they're all looking at me like, 'What happened?' "

More and more people who hear "Thank You" can relate. The R&B ballad comes from the British singer-rapper's third album "All of Me" (Homeschool/Atlantic), which doesn't arrive in stores until Tuesday but already has struck a chord with fans. The song, shaping up to be her biggest hit since the chart-topping smash "American Boy" with Kanye West, already has crashed the Top 10 on Billboard's Adult R&B charts and is climbing the pop charts as well. However, Estelle already knows the song is something special.

"I've been doing shows from Kansas City to Cleveland to Cincinnati, and when we get into 'Thank You,' boys and girls, men and women, every single venue, are singing the entire song," she says. "I've stopped a couple times and said, 'Are you sure? Everybody feels this way?'"

"Thank You" is a breakup song in the Sade tradition of sounding at peace in the midst of emotional turmoil, and Estelle was in the midst of a painful breakup when she recorded it. "I didn't do the Sade vibe on purpose," she says, laughing. "It was me trying not to cry. It was me trying to maintain my steadiest voice. I did like four takes where I was trying to sing, but was crying all the way through it. I was like, 'OK, don't cry, don't cry.' That part where there's a tremble in my voice? That's where I was trying to keep it together."

Sharing her pain

It's tough for Estelle to get through the song night after night on tour. Initially, it was because of the personal pain she associates with the song, but now, it's because of the shared emotion with her fans. "When the song starts and everybody starts singing, it takes everything for tears to not fall out my face because it's like, 'It's not just me? I'm not alone?'," she says. "Every show, I've tried not to cry, and every show I've been driven to tears falling. I don't think it's ever not gonna be that -- until I get really happy or in another relationship. But even then, I'm sure I'm gonna feel, 'You guys are with me, huh?' That alone makes me wanna cry."

The success of "Thank You" comes after a period of struggle for Estelle, who saw two follow-up singles that were meant to launch the new album fail with fans. When both "Freak" with David Guetta and "Fall in Love" with John Legend got lukewarm responses in 2010, Estelle went back to the drawing board for the project that would become "All of Me."

"I hate that if you do one style of music or become really well known for that one song, that everything that comes after has to fit that mold," she says, laughing at how people clamored for more songs like "American Boy," and then when she delivered the similar "Fall in Love," many complained it was too similar. "You can't please everybody. I give up. I'm not trying to. I don't care. Leave me alone with that. I'm going to do the music of where my heart's at."

That new motto made "All of Me" a wildly eclectic affair. Estelle returns to rapping on "The Life" and there's a harder edge to "Break My Heart," which features Rick Ross. She goes old school hip-hop on "Cold Crush" and super-current dance-pop on "International (Serious)" featuring Chris Brown and Trey Songz.

"I never wanted to stay in one lane," she says. "I wanted to do what was natural. I wanted to capture whatever I was feeling in that moment."

Finding her inspiration

Estelle says she drew inspiration from Lauryn Hill's Grammy-winning hip-hop landmark "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." On "All of Me," she includes spoken-word pieces in between songs that are similar to Hill's on "Miseducation," though Estelle's pieces were the result of she and five of her friends sitting around her Manhattan apartment just talking.

"I didn't know if it would ever see the light of day," she says. "But it had this energy, this feeling of how I felt today."

Estelle says she realizes it will be a struggle for some people to reconcile the serious "Thank You" with the flirty "American Boy." "It takes time to build because people are getting used to a new sound from me," she says, before quickly adding, "They're coming around. They're like, 'Yo, I'm not even caring about that other song she had. This right here is how I feel.' Even guys! Guys tell me this is a song that you put on and you play around your boys and don't think, 'I shouldn't be playing this around my boys.' Because some girl's done it to them, too. ... I think that's the common thread with me. If I just sing what I feel, people will feel it."

WHO Estelle

WHEN|WHERE 7 p.m. Tuesday, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, Manhattan

INFO $23; 516-334-0800, livenation.com