Alannah Myles - Biography

Biography

Alannah began writing songs at the age of 9. She performed in a songwriting group for the Kiwanis Music Festival in Toronto at 12 years of age and by the time she was a teenager, began performing solo gigs in Southern Ontario. She eventually met Christopher Ward, a WMG recording artist and songwriter who helped her to form her own band, and performed cover versions of T. Rex, AC/DC, Bob Seger, Ann Peebles, the Rolling Stones, and the Pretenders. By the time she was in her early mid-twenties, she and Christopher began collaborating with David Tyson to produce her self-titled debut album, Alannah Myles. She appeared in a 1984 installment of the television series program The Kids of Degrassi Street, in which she played the role of an aspiring singer and single mother. She was featured in several other TV and film productions as a guest prior to her success as a recording artist.

In May 1989, Warner Music in Canada released Alannah Myles. It produced four Top 40 selections, including "Love Is", "Lover of Mine", and "Still Got This Thing", and the number-one hit "Black Velvet". In early 1990 Atlantic Records released "Black Velvet" in the U.S., making her first album ineligible for possible Grammy nominations. For Myles, "Black Velvet" became a number one hit worldwide and was named the most played song on radio for 1989 & 1990. By 2000 it had received the ASCAP Millionaire Award for having received over five million airplays at radio. "Black Velvet" won Myles a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Performance in 1991, and three Juno Awards.

The year 1992 brought the follow-up album, Rockinghorse, which included the hit singles "Song Instead Of A Kiss," which was written and composed by Myles, Nancy Simmonds and Canadian poet Robert Priest, "Our World, Our Times", and "Sonny, Say You Will." She received a Grammy nomination for Rockinghorse and several global awards, including a Juno and Much Music's people's choice award for "Our World, Our Times."

The year 1995 produced Myles's final album on Atlantic Records before being released from the label, granting Warner/Atlantic a Best Of CD after only 3 records. The A-lan-nah album, which contained no Top 40 singles, included two tracks which made it into the Top 100: "Family Secret" and "Blow Wind, Blow."

In 1997, she managed to terminate her eight-record contract with Atlantic Records with the help of her then-manager, Miles Copeland III, who immediately signed her to his Ark 21 Records. There she released A Rival, which had the Top 40 hit "Bad 4 You," written and recorded by Myles, Desmond Child and Eric Bazilian at Copeland's castle songwriting retreat at Grand Brassac, France.

In February of 2005, together with the Swedish band Kee Marcello's K2, she participated in the third semi-final of Melodifestivalen, the Swedish national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. Their selection, "We Got It All," scored very few points and finished seventh out of eight songs, yet it managed to dominate the leading newspaper and media headlines in Sweden.

In April of 2008, she went public about her then upcoming album Black Velvet, which featured a new recording of her song of the same name in addition to ten new studio recordings. She discussed the subject in May 2008 in an interview with Evan Solomon on the TV program CBC News: Sunday Night.

In the fall of 2009, Myles released the CD Black Velvet on Linus Entertainment, which merged with Canada's True North Records and released the album in America in the spring of 2010. This was followed by a video for the song "Trouble" that features a jug band performance. "Trouble" was awarded an 'Honourable Mention' as a finalist in the blues category at the 2009 International Songwriting Contest. Myles won the 15th annual USA Songwriting Competition for both best rock/alternative song as well as grand prize finalist for a selection, written and composed jointly with Nancy Simmonds for her "Black Velvet" CD, titled "Give Me Love."

Myles toured in support of her Black Velvet CD beginning with a string of European dates in March 2011. Her song Black Velvet was one of four selected to be covered on the CBC Television reality television show Cover Me Canada.

At a Toronto music festival on July 1, 2011, she revealed that she had suffered severe spinal nerve damage from an excess of chiropractic treatments and was left unable to move her head or neck. Her voice was unaffected, however, and she continued to perform and record.