Sheena Easton

Sheena Shirley Easton, born Sheena Shirley Orr on 27 April 1959 at Bellshill Maternity Hospital in Lanarkshire, Scotland, is a singer, songwriter, and actress. The youngest of six children born to Annie and steel mill labourer Alex Orr, she has two brothers, Robert and Alex, and three sisters, Marilyn, Anessa, and Morag. Her earliest documented public performance took place in 1964, at age five, when she sang "Early One Morning" at her aunt and uncle's 25th wedding anniversary celebration. Her father died in 1969, after which her mother raised the family alone. Easton has credited her mother with teaching all of her children to read at home before they began school.

Easton did not pursue a singing career until seeing Barbra Streisand perform over the opening credits of the film The Way We Were, an experience she has described as decisive in shaping her ambitions. Her academic performance earned her a scholarship to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, where she trained from 1975 to 1979 as a speech and drama teacher while performing nights with a band called Something Else at local clubs. In 1979, she married Sandi Easton, the first of her four husbands; they divorced after eight months, but she retained the surname Easton. That same year, a tutor encouraged her to audition for Esther Rantzen, producer of the BBC programme The Big Time, which documented an unknown performer's path to pop stardom. Easton was selected as the programme's subject, and EMI Records awarded her a recording contract, with Christopher Neil assigned as her producer and Deke Arlon as her first manager.

Her debut single, "Modern Girl," was released in February 1980 and initially peaked at number 56 on the UK Singles Chart. After The Big Time aired in August 1980, the single was reissued and climbed into the UK top 10. Her follow-up single, "9 to 5," reached number 3 in the United Kingdom and was certified Gold. The two singles appeared in the UK top 10 simultaneously. Released in the United States and Canada as "Morning Train (Nine to Five)" to avoid confusion with Dolly Parton's concurrent hit, the track reached number 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Adult Contemporary chart. "Modern Girl" followed as the US follow-up, peaking at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. Before the end of 1981, Easton had recorded "For Your Eyes Only" as the theme to the James Bond film of the same name, a song nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1982. At the 24th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1982, she received the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Easton collaborated with country singer Kenny Rogers in 1982 on the recording "We've Got Tonight." Her fifth album, A Private Heaven, released in 1984, marked a shift in her public image, and its lead single "Strut" reached the top 10 in Argentina, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. She also released "Sugar Walls," a song written by Prince under the pseudonym Alexander Nevermind, which attracted controversy for its sexually explicit content. Her broader collaborations during the 1980s included work with Prince, Babyface, L.A. Reid, and Nile Rodgers. At the 27th Annual Grammy Awards, she won the Grammy Award for Best Mexican-American Performance for "Me Gustas Tal Como Eres," recorded with Luis Miguel. Her ninth album, The Lover in Me, was released in 1988; its title track reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on the Billboard Dance Singles Sales chart, and the album became her first to appear on the UK Albums Chart in five years. Easton became the first artist in Billboard history to place a top-five hit on each of the publication's primary singles charts, and her worldwide record sales are estimated at 20 million copies.

As her recording career developed, Easton relocated to the United States. In Scotland, she was publicly criticized for losing her Scottish accent and was heckled at the Big Day Out concert in Glasgow in 1990. Her career subsequently expanded into theatre. Between 1992 and 1994, she appeared on Broadway, starring in Man of La Mancha and also appearing in Grease.