In the four years since her last album, Paula Abdul has been sued by one of her backup singers, gotten married, been romantically linked with not one but two members of that model American family, the Jacksons, roundly defeated the aforementioned backup singer in court, and gotten divorced.

So what bleak, depressing, world-weary title has the 32-year-old singer bestowed upon her new album?

Try Head Over Heels.

Which doesn't mean the experience was exactly a laugh a minute.

"I was two months into working and writing with some of my producers, and I decided to put the album away for a couple of months and take care of some personal stuff - a divorce (from actor Emilio Estevez), things like that - because I just couldn't get focused," a slender Abdul is saying yesterday during a one-day media blitz in Toronto.

"When I started writing the songs, I was at a very emotional low point," she adds, explaining the schizophrenic nature of Head Over Heels, due out June 13. "Then toward the end, I was just feeling really positive and excited to be out there again."

Abdul, who can appear breathtakingly naive in interviews, also speaks about "spiritual growth."

"Not to sound stupid, but I've really grown up in the last four years," she says with a rueful smile. "I was going through things I didn't understand why they were happening, things that were completely out of my control. Things that I finally learned how to surrender to.

"Because I've always been, in lots of ways, a control freak and thinking I could handle everything and predict the outcome of everything and make everything work. It was just a real eye-opening experience that certain things happen, you don't know why, and you just have to live through them."

One of those things was a lawsuit by backup singer Yvette Marine, who claimed to be the lead vocalist on three of the songs from Abdul's multi-platinum 1988 debut, Forever Your Girl.

It's a topic Abdul is clearly bursting to talk about.

"I asked (the record company), please don't settle this out of court," she says. "Even though she's suing you guys, it's really me. And I would feel horrible knowing you gave her a penny, because this is an opportunist."

The case finally went to trial in 1993. "It went on for a whole month," said Abdul, "and at the end, the jury deliberated for all of 10 minutes. We won unanimously. And that girl" - Abdul never once mentions Marine by name - "did not receive one penny. Not one thing."

Plus "that girl" hasn't had an album on the chart in the meantime, has she?

"No," replies Abdul, bitterly, "and I don't think she probably ever will."

Abdul will be far too busy to dwell on the matter for too long. She's facing an endless round of interviews, video shoots (the first, for My Love Is For Real, debuts today on MuchMusic) and, eventually, a tour, which will kick off in either December or January.

"It's like a machine," she sighs, good-naturedly. "Once it starts going, there's no stopping it. You have to keep catching up to it. That's how my career's been."