Wendy James

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Wendy James (born January 21, 1966 in East Sussex , England ) is a British singer and songwriter . She gained greater fame as the lead singer of the alternative rock band Transvision Vamp in the late 1980s.

biography

Wendy James was given up for adoption right after she was born and raised with her adoptive parents. Already at the age of 16 she left home and went to Brighton to there dramaturgy study. To finance her studies, Wendy James began solo appearances as a singer in a nightclub , where she mainly performed cover versions of Patti Smith songs. In the course of this she got to know Nick Christian Sayer , with whom she soon moved in and also carried out joint projects. Then both moved to London , where they finally founded the band Transvision Vamp in 1986 .

In 1991, Transvision Vamp split after they had previously released three albums. Because all of Transvision Vamp's songs were written and composed by Nick Christian Sayer, Wendy James, who had previously only sung, found it difficult to start her own solo career because she lacked any experience in music production. In 1993 she released her solo album "Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears", which was written entirely by her friend Elvis Costello to enable her to start over. The album received bad reviews without exception, and so Wendy James temporarily ended her solo career.

In the period from 1994 to 2004, Wendy James completely disappeared from the music scene and moved to New York . There she began to work on writing and composing songs, almost without exception using computers and electronic aids. In 2004 she finally joined the band Racine as a front woman. The band released the two albums "Number One" (2004) and "Racine 2" (2007) before they broke up. Eighteen years after "Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears", Wendy James released her second solo album in 2011, "I Came Here To Blow Minds".

Discography

Albums with Transvision Vamp

  • Pop Art (1988)
  • Velveteen (1989)
  • Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble (1991)

Albums with Racine

  • Number One (2004)
  • Racine 2 (2007)

Solo albums

  • Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears (1993)
  • I Came Here to Blow Minds (2011)
  • The Price of the Ticket (2016)
  • Queen High Straight (2020)

Singles

  • The Nameless One (1993)
  • London's Brilliant (1993)
  • Do You Know What I'm Saying? (1993)

credentials

The Belgian rock band Paranoiacs paid tribute to her in 1989 on the album Bananas with the song Wendy James .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME James, Wendy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British singer
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH East Sussex , England , United Kingdom