April 27 – Senior Sheena

Happy 65th birthday to one of pop’s more versatile women. A “one hit wonder” who actually wasn’t. Scottish, American; pioneering reality TV star, Mexican music award winner, Broadway star, Prince’s girlfriend (perhaps)… guess there’s more to Sheena Easton than her 5-foot frame or “9 to 5” song might suggest.

Easton was born in a small town in Scotland as Sheena Orr. She grew up in a musical household, apparently loving singing and doing so in public as young as 5. She set her mind to becoming a professional singer after seeing Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were.

Around the time she hit the age of 20, two important things happened to Sheena. She married a young man with the last name of “Easton”, and became a TV/music star. The marriage, her first but not last, didn’t even last one year but she kept his name, Then there was TV…

At the end of the ’70s, the BBC in a surprisingly ahead-of-its-time move, had a show called The Big Time which designed to take an unknown and follow their career right the way through into music stardom. Easton won her audition and was the contestant, and eventually got signed to EMI Records. The show filmed her right through the recording of her first single, “Modern Girl”, which took its time but eventually got to #8 in the UK.

Her next single was the one she’s synonymous with, although curiously depending on which side of the ocean you’re on has two different names. At home for her, it was released as the upbeat, perky “9 to 5”. Over here, it was released as the upbeat, perky “Morning Train”, as weeks before it was released, Dolly Parton scored a #1 hit with an entirely different song called “9 to 5.” Whatever you want, the song about the doting housewife waiting for her hubby to come home from work after taking the morning train“so we can play all night” was a delightful pop ditty that the public loved. It got to #3 in Britain but topped the charts in Australia and North America, with it ending among the year’s 20 biggest singles in both the U.S. and Canada in 1981. By hitting #1 on Billboard she remarkably became only the third Brit lady to have a #1 song in the States. Petula Clark and Lulu precedeed her in that.

The popularity of the song made her decide to ditch the cold, misty moors and move to America (she now lives primarily in the Las Vegas area and became a U.S. citizen in ’92) and got her invited to sing for Bond…James Bond. She did the title track of the movie For Your Eyes Only, which was a top 5 hit in North America, making the decade’s second most popular Bond song, behind “A View To a Kill.” As the ’80s progressed, she went on to top the country charts, with a duet with Kenny Rogers (a cover of the great Bob Seger song “We’ve Got Tonight”) and then surprisingly, have major R&B and Tejano hits! She’s nothing if not versatile, this Sheena.

In 1985 she cut an album sung in Spanish, with Spanish versions of her previous hits (like “9 to 5”, now “El Primer Tren”) and some new songs, one of which “Me Gustas Tal Como Eres” won her a Grammy for best Mexican-American recording. Not a bad feat for a little Scottish lass! Around that time she became friends with Prince. Many suggested they were more than just friends, but she never confirmed that. Either way, she toured with the Purple One in the late-’80s, co-wrote a few songs with him including “Love ’89” which was an R&B hit for Patti Labelle and recorded the duet “U Got the Look” with him, which got to #2. She also recorded the mildly explicit “Sugar Walls” that he wrote, which got to Tipper Gore. The Parental Music censors used it as an example of why they should be able to censor music; they lost of course but did get the “Parental Guidance” stickers put on albums with explicit lyrics. Surprisingly, when all was said and done, Sheena would cut 16 studio albums through 2000 and have seven top 20 singles in Britain – five of those in 1980-81 – and ten in the U.S. I’m as surprised as you are by that. She’s scored gold albums in such varied places as Canada, Japan, Ireland and Argentina.

When she became a mother in the ’90s, she decided to cut back on touring, but did devote herself a bit more to acting. She’d got her feet wet with that in the ’80s where else but Miami Vice, the TV show about music and cops, in which she played Don Johnson’s wife. In the ’90s she took to the Broadway stage to play roles in Man of La Mancha and Grease. More recently she returned to Jolly Ole’ to play in a London adaptation of 42nd Street.

So at 65, her slowing career might not have quite equaled Barbra’s but ten American hit singles and three popular stage roles is nothing to sneeze at. And dare I say, Ms. Streisand never won a Grammy for, umm, “Mexican” music. So, even if we here at A Sound Day know about… well, one of your songs, (that one about the guy who takes the train in the morning and then comes home again to find you waiting for him!) we wish you a very happy birthday and salute you for doing well in so many genres of music, thankfully none of which involve your homeland’s bagpipes!