Lauryn Hill announced for exclusive Bluesfest appearance

Lauryn Hill is playing an exclusive set at Bluesfest in Byron Bay on Easter Friday.

She joins a contingent of game changers including Robert Plant, Lionel Richie, John Butler Trio, Tash Sultana, Seal, Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crowe and Melissa Etheridge.

Hill’s career has been up and down since a strong start with The Fugees and a remarkable debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill which won five Grammys.

But her appearance at Bluesfest promises to coincide with a positive period, and there is the chance Australia might get previews of her latest songs.

Last year she returned to doing festivals, and suggested she might go back into the studio.

“I’m getting excited again,” she confesses.

Her five children are growing up, she’s got the (business) support system she’s lacked in recent years, “and I still felt I had to go through some experiences.”

The next record, she suggests, will see her focus on developing as a singer and widening her range.

She told one media outlet, “The feeling you get from (my) music, I get first. You get a delayed response to the feeling I get.

“Not just the voice but all the principals – the production, the idea, the concept, the music involved, there is a high, there is an emotional experience for sure that happens.”

“Some would argue there is a creative addiction because it makes me feel so good, but of a healthy kind. When everything is on, it’s a wonderful experience.”

However she has been the centre of some eye-raising episodes.

She was sued by her collaborators when she refused to give them credit and royalties for their contributions.

A critic suggested a MTV Unplugged session should have been called Unhinged because of her lengthy rambles and insistence on playing (badly) her acoustic guitar.

In 2003, Catholic leaders urged her record label Columbia to drop her because she used a concert at Vatican City to slam the Catholic Church for its paedophilia scandal

Five years later she demanded to be referred to her as “Ms Hill” because “I know I’m a wise woman. That is the respect I deserve."

In 2013 she spent three months’ jail time in Connecticut for evading federal taxes on $1.8 million earned between 2005 and 2007.