Grace Jones

Grace Jones is a famous American singer, model and movie actress. Born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, she was raised in New York. Jones started her music career after signing a contract with the big company Island Records. Her first albums, recorded in accordance with classic disco patterns, quickly gained popularity on dance floors. Portfolio (1977), Fame (1978), and Muse (1979) were similar and met the requirements of the then popular music. These studio works included such celebrated dance hits as Sorry, That's The Trouble, I Need A Man, and La Vie En Rose. The singer found strong support among gay minorities.

The beginning of eighties saw Jones change both her music style and her own image. She depicted a tough and masculine woman with an extravagant hairdo and manner of clothing. She looked like this from the cover and the booklet of her best album, Nightclubbing (1981). It featured both cover versions for the songs by some other performers, including Iggy Pop and Sting, and her Jones’s own compositions. The next album, Living My Life (1982), revealed a strong reggae influence. It contained the hits Nipple To The Bottle, The Apple Stretching, and My Jamaican Guy. In 1985, Jones released the Slave to the Rhythm album, composed of remakes of the title track. It was followed by the 1986 release of Inside Story with the singer’s last song to enter the USA Hot 100, I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You). The next studio work Bulletproof Heart, delivered in 1989, spawned a dance smash called Love on Top of Love - Killer Kiss. For a brief moment, Grace Jones managed to work proficiently as a musician, model and actress at the same time. But soon, it became obvious that her modeling and acting promised more success than music making.

A wide range activity and sharp shift of preferences in the modern music forced Jones to leave the recording studio for nearly a decade. Meanwhile, she played parts in a number of famed movies, including Conan the Destroyer, A View to a Kill, and Boomerang, performing along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Roger Moore and Eddie Murphy. Grace managed to get herself spotted not only on covers of magazines, but in scandalous news too. For example, she slapped one of the TV showmen feeling bereft of his attention. Once she was taken off the train by the police after a squabble with a ticket officer. In the late nineties, Grace Jones made an effort to have a grand comeback to the music stage. However, her new album, released at the turn of the century, was no more than a simple collection of remade old songs, lacking freshness and originality of Grace’s first works. After another long pause, the singer delivered one more album, Hurricane (2008). Although she remains below the mainstream stardom, Grace Jones deserves to be one of the most influential dance musicians ever.