Career
In the early 1990s she was signed to Columbia Records as part of the pop duo JJ, which gained some recognition while touring the UK.
However, when the band project failed she continued as a solo artist; signing to A&M Records. In the mid 1990s she came to the attention of trance producer, Brian Transeau, when he purchased one of her singles from a bargain bin in Manchester. Impressed by her vocals, he decided to collaborate with her recording the track "Remember."
Following this, Johnston was in demand to vocal for many other trance tracks, notably for Alan Bremmer and Anthony Pappa's "Freefall" project. Upon being given the instrumental, Jan came up with the lyrics resulting in "Skydive (I Feel Wonderful)" which despite being a club anthem, never translated to a commercial hit, finally hitting the top 40 at #35 on its third release in 2001. Paul Oakenfold signed her to his Perfecto Records label in 1999 to record an album. The resulting album 'Emerging' was delayed numerous times, with her first Perfecto release being a track she recorded with BT years earlier entitled "Flesh", rather than an actual track from the album, which reached #36 in the charts. The original version of "Flesh" has never been released, only remixes. A cover of The Carpenters' song, "Superstar", was lined up to be the album's first single, with remixes produced by Todd Terry and Bill Hammel, but would ultimately go on to be unreleased. Only one track from 'Emerging' was released as a single; "Silent Words" in 2001, with the album ultimately being unreleased.
Remixes of one of the album tracks, "As The Cracks Appear", emerged on a Perfecto promo release, as did a remix of "Superstar", and a remix of the album track "Unafraid", appeared on the soundtrack to the film, Swordfish.
Following the failure of the 'Emerging' project, Johnston continued to write and record with trance producers, contributing five tracks to Paul van Dyk's Grammy Award nominated, Reflections album, amongst other projects.
In 2008, new solo tracks by Johnston began to emerge, with two of them "Sleeping Satellite" and "Obsession", released digitally in 2009 by Perfecto.
Read more about this topic: Jan Johnston
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