Holly Sherwood

Holly Sherwood is an American performer whose career has spanned Broadway, television, and rock recording, with particular recognition for her vocal work alongside composer Jim Steinman. She began her professional life at age three, appearing as the featured child in Procter and Gamble's Ivory Soap commercials for the "Rosemary's Reflects" campaign. Her stage work began early as well, when she and four of her sisters were cast in a production of Richard Rodgers' The Sound of Music, a credit that led to appearances in eighteen additional productions of the same show. Her Broadway career ran from 1962 to 1966 and included the 1966 revival of Annie Get Your Gun, during which composer Irving Berlin took notice of her abilities and wrote a new song specifically tailored to her. She subsequently appeared in the Los Angeles premiere of Leonard Bernstein's MASS.

Sherwood launched a solo recording career in March 1972 with the single "Day by Day," a cover of a number from the Broadway musical Godspell that also incorporated a medley of two other songs from the show. Produced by Tony Orlando for Rocky Road Records, the single reached number 104 on the Billboard Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart and also charted in the United Kingdom. The following year she released "Yesterday and You," which reached the Top 30 on the Easy Listening chart and number 117 on the Bubbling Under chart. Later in the decade she recorded a duet with Leonard Coleman Boone titled "There's No Me Without You" and became a member of the musical group Wondergap, alongside Jim Ryan and Andy Goldmark, signed to A&M Records.

Her television work included a role on Steven Bochco's ABC series Cop Rock and a period as part of the musical support team for Saturday Night Live, where she performed comedic jingles. She also provided background vocals for Olivia Newton-John's performance of "Physical." As a session vocalist she recorded background vocals for Billy Joel and Kenny Loggins, sang with Cindy Bullens on the MCA release "The Touch," and performed alongside Joe Cocker, Arlo Guthrie, and Pete Seeger on Seeger's Hudson Valley Sloop tour, where she sang with the Rooster River Boys.

In 1983, Sherwood began a sustained professional relationship with Jim Steinman when she contributed background vocals to Bonnie Tyler's album Faster Than the Speed of Night, which Steinman produced. Her voice appears on multiple tracks, including the international hit single "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and the album's six-and-a-half-minute title track, on which she performed a distinctive vocal wail near the song's conclusion. She became a core member of a recurring group of background vocalists that included Rory Dodd and Eric Troyer, and the ensemble appeared on recordings by artists such as Barry Manilow and Barbra Streisand throughout the 1980s, with Sherwood contributing both performance and vocal arrangement work.

Steinman assembled an impromptu band called Fire Inc. to record two songs he had written for Walter Hill's film Streets of Fire. Sherwood, alongside Laurie Sargent of Face to Face, Dodd, and Troyer, formed the core of the group. Her vocals and Sargent's were dubbed over actress Diane Lane's in the film for the songs "Nowhere Fast" and "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young." Steinman later formed a separate group, Pandora's Box, which released the album Original Sin in 1989. Sherwood sang lead on the track "Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)," a song subsequently covered by Meat Loaf on Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell. Steinman has stated that Sherwood also recorded a demo of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" in connection with the album, though that version was ultimately passed over in favor of a recording by vocalist Elaine Caswell; the song later became a hit for Celine Dion in 1996.

In later years Sherwood worked as a screenplay writer for Sherwood Scott Artists LLC, based in New Mexico, for a period of twenty years, and she briefly owned The Sherwood Gallery, which featured a collection of rare artwork. She lives on the East Coast.