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The flipSide 05/30/2022

5/30/2022

Cyndi Lauper

Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper Thornton (born June 22, 1953)[2]

is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and activist.[3] Her career has spanned over 40 years.[4] Her album She's So Unusual (1983) was the first debut album by a female artist to achieve four top-five hits on the Billboard Hot 100—"Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "Time After Time", "She Bop", and "All Through the Night"—and earned Lauper the Best New Artist award at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards in 1985. Her success continued with the soundtrack for the motion picture The Goonies and her second record True Colors (1986). This album included the number one single "True Colors" and "Change of Heart", which peaked at number three. In 1989, she had a hit with "I Drove All Night".

Lauper is known for her distinctive image, featuring a variety of hair colors and eccentric clothing,[18] and for her powerful and distinctive four-octave singing range.[19] She has been celebrated for her humanitarian work, particularly as an advocate for LGBT rights in the United States. Her charitable efforts were acknowledged in 2013 when she was invited as a special guest to attend U.S. President Barack Obama's second-term inauguration.[20]

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The flipSide 05/23/2022

5/23/2022

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Rod Stewart

Sir Roderick David Stewart

CBE (born 10 January 1945)[1] is a British rock and pop singer, songwriter, and record producer. Born and raised in London, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is among the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 120 million records worldwide.[2] He has had 10 number-one albums and 31 top ten singles in the UK, six of which reached number one.[3] Stewart has had 16 top ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.[4]

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The flipSide 05/16/2022

5/16/2022

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Andy Gibb

Andrew Roy Gibb (5 March 1958 – 10 March 1988)

was an English singer, songwriter, and actor.[3] He was the younger brother of the Bee Gees: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb.

Gibb came to prominence in the late 1970s through the early 1980s with eight singles reaching the Top 20 of the US Hot 100, three of which went to number-one; "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" (1977), "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" (1977), and "Shadow Dancing" (1978). In the early 1980s, he co-hosted the American music television series Solid Gold. He also performed in a production of The Pirates of Penzance and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Gibb would later have issues with drug addiction and depression. He died in 1988, five days after his 30th birthday.

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The flipSide 05/09/2022

5/9/2022

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Jackson Browne

Clyde Jackson Browne
(born October 9, 1948) is an American musician, songwriter and political activist who has sold over 18 million albums in the United States.[1]

Emerging as a precocious teenage songwriter in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he had his first successes writing songs for others, writing "These Days" as a 16-year-old; the song became a minor hit for the German singer and Andy Warhol protégé Nico in 1967. He also wrote several songs for fellow Southern California bands Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (with whom he was briefly a member in 1966) and the Eagles, the latter of whom had their first Billboard Top 40 hit in 1972 with the Browne co-written song "Take It Easy".

Encouraged by his successes writing songs for others, Browne released his self-titled debut album in 1972, which spawned two Top 40 hits of his own, "Doctor, My Eyes" and "Rock Me on the Water". For his debut album, as well as for the next several albums and concert tours, Browne started working closely with The Section, a prolific session band that also worked with a number of other prominent singer-songwriters of the era. His second album, For Everyman, was released in 1973, and while it lacked an enduring single, has been retrospectively assessed as some of his best work, appearing highly on several "Best Album of All Time" lists. His third album, Late for the Sky, was his most successful to that point, peaking at number 14 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and earning Browne his first Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. His fourth album, The Pretender, continued the pattern of each album topping the previous by peaking at number 5 on the album chart, and spawned the hit singles "Here Come Those Tears Again" and "The Pretender".

It would be the 1977 album Running on Empty, however, that would be his signature work, peaking at number 3 on the album chart, and remaining there for over a year. Both a live album and a concept album, the songs on the album explore the themes of life as a touring musician, and the album was recorded both on stage, and in places touring musicians spend time when not playing, such as hotel rooms, backstage, and in one case on a moving tour bus. The album produced two Top 40 singles, "Running on Empty" and "The Load-Out/Stay", and many of the other tracks became popular radio hits on the AOR format.

Successful albums continued through the 1980s, including the 1980 album Hold Out, his only number 1 album, the non-album single "Somebody's Baby", which was used in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and 1983's Lawyers in Love, which included the hit single "Tender Is the Night". In 1986, he released Lives in the Balance, which had several radio hits and included the introspective "In the Shape of a Heart", which was inspired by the suicide of his first wife a decade prior. His string of hit albums came to an end at that point, as his next several albums failed to produce a gold or platinum RIAA rating.

He released two compilation albums, The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne in 1997, and The Very Best of Jackson Browne, released in conjunction with his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004. His most recent studio album is 2021's Downhill from Everywhere, the follow-up to 2014's Standing in the Breach, which included the first fully realized version of his song "The Birds of St. Marks", a song he had written at age 18. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him as 37th in its list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time".[2]

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The flipSide 05/02/2022

5/2/2022

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Phil Collins

Philip David Charles Collins LVO
(born 30 January 1951) is an English drummer, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor. He is best known for his tenure as the drummer and lead singer of the rock band Genesis and for his solo career which began in 1981. Between 1982 and 1990, Collins scored three UK and seven US number-one singles as a solo artist. When his work with Genesis, his work with other artists, as well as his solo career is totalled, he had more US top 40 singles than any other artist during the 1980s.[8] His most successful singles from the period include "In the Air Tonight", "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)", "One More Night", and "Another Day in Paradise".

Collins's discography includes eight studio albums that have sold 33.5 million certified units in the US and an estimated 150 million records sold worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling artists.[11] He is one of only three recording artists, along with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, who have sold over 100 million records both as solo artists and separately as principal members of a band.[12][13] He has won eight Grammy Awards, six Brit Awards (winning Best British Male Artist three times), two Golden Globe Awards, one Academy Award, and a Disney Legend Award.[14] He was awarded six Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the International Achievement Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010. He has also been recognised by music publications with induction into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2012, and the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame in 2013.[15][16]