Mariza, the Portuguese fado singer has near rock star status at home.

And that spotlight follows her outside Portugal as well. Mariza has a new CD out.

And starting this Friday, she's touring North America for three months.

For Mariza's fans who know her as a fadista, her new CD "Terra" offers them pure fado, as on that tune.

But there are also songs that take Mariza's tradition and ply it with jazzy torchy lines.

MW: When you go out to dinner in Lisbon, do people mob you, do people recognize you and ask you for autographs? M: Of course they recognize me, but they are very polite. Sometimes they hug me. Sometimes they hug me. Sometimes they don't believe it's me because they have an image of me, because on television they put on five kilos more than you normally have. when they see me live, they see such a thin person. But in Portugal, people are very very nice and polite. And sometimes they look, and they talk, like, "She's there, she's there, look." But they don't bother me.”

“On "Terra" you cover this song "Smile" by Charlie Chaplin. What does this song remind you of? Where did that come from? Mariza: Well all the time, I used to sing it. And when I translate the song into Portuguese, to me it was like a fado poem, you know a fado lyric. MW: What is fado in the song "Smile" for you? Mariza: Well, the lyric, it says like "light up your face with gladness, hide every trace of sadness," and in fado you have a lot of that type of feeling because fado is a music to explore the feelings of life and the human beings. And this music is doing the same thing with the lyric. So I decided to show like, even in English, you could have a kind of fado because music is universal.”

Another thing about Mariza's cover of "Smile": it's only on her North American release and, as she says, for the North American audiences who've made an effort to understand fado.

“It's like a gift to all the audiences who've been so wonderful and trying to understand me as a musician. And I have to thank them for that. It's amazing. It's really amazing.”