The most successful British girl group in pop history, Bananarama formed in London in late 1981. Drawing equal inspiration for their name from the children's television program The Banana Splits and the Roxy Music song "Pyjamarama," the trio was comprised of lifelong friends Keren Woodward and Sarah Dallin along with Siobhan Fahey, whom Dallin befriended at the London College of Fashion…
Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart (born September 13, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, and poet. Classically trained on piano as a child, Apple began composing her own songs when she was 8 years old. Her debut album, Tidal, written when Apple was 17, was released in 1996 and received a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single "Criminal". She followed with When the Pawn… (1999), produced by Jon Brion, which was also critically and commercially successful and was certified platinum…
Rising from the ashes of late-'90s teen pop ephemera, Marion Elise Ravn (known as simply Marion Raven) has been around for a while. In 1994, the ten-year-old Raven recorded a collection of children's songs for EMI Norway with her friend Marit Larsen. The pair went on to form M2M in 1998, a doe-eyed addition to an overstuffed pop scene reigned over by Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera…
Samantha Karen Fox (born 15 April 1966) is an English singer, songwriter, actress and former glamour model. In 1983, at age 16, she began appearing as a topless model on Page 3 of British tabloid newspaper The Sun, and continued as a Page 3 girl until 1986. During this time, she became the most popular pin-up girl of her era, as well as one of the most photographed British women of the 1980s…
Chanteuse Patricia Kaas was born in France's Lorraine region, where she began performing as a youth; by age 11, she even held a residency at the Rumpelkammer Club in Sarrebrucken, Germany, over time honing a distinct style updating the French chanson tradition with elements of pop, blues and jazz. Scoring her first national hit in 1987 with "Mademoiselle Chante le Blues," Kaas was named Female Newcomer of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique, and her debut album Mademoiselle Chante earned platinum status in France, Belgium and Switzerland; the follow-up, Scene de Vie, topped the French charts for three months…
Disco singer (born Amanda Louise Smith on July 17, 1970) from England who became famous after having an affair with Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones when she was 13 and he was 47. They married 6 years later, but divorced 2 years later…
b. Sabrina Salerno, 15 March 1968, Genoa, Italy. This late 80s disco pop diva briefly challenged the former UK "page three model"-turned-pop singer Samantha Fox as Europe's favourite pop sex symbol…
1980s pop diva Sheena Easton was born Sheena Shirley Orr in Bellshill, Scotland on April 27, 1959. Inspired to pursue a singing career after seeing Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were, she later attended the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama while moonlighting with the group Something Else. Exposure on the BBC television production The Big Time: Pop Singer not only resulted in a record deal with EMI but also pushed Easton's 1980 debut singles, "Modern Girl" and "9 to 5," into the U.K. Top Ten, and she became the first female artist to score two simultaneous Top Ten hits…
Despite almost universal critical hatred, Transvision Vamp briefly rose to the top of the U.K. charts in the late '80s, thanks largely to the media image of lead singer Wendy James, who fashioned herself as a sexually provocative, rebellious, fashion-conscious punk – sort of a mixture of Madonna, Blondie's Deborah Harry, T. Rex, and the Clash…
Martika appeared after teen girls like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson returned adolescent bubblegum to the pop charts. Martika was born as Marta Marrero in Whittier, CA, on May 18, 1969. Her parents were originally from Cuba; however, they left the country during a revolution. Raised in California, Martika started acting before launching a recording career, appearing in the film version of Annie in 1982 and on the TV series Kids Incorporated from 1984 to 1986…