Personal Life and Career
Thornton was born in Charleston, South Carolina and began studying voice from the age of six, as well as learning to play the piano and the clarinet. She grew up listening to Aretha Franklin and Roberta Flack. Thornton would mimic the female vocalists she saw on television or heard on radio. Later on, she financed her college studies with appearances in talent shows and smaller band concerts. She frequented a club called The Peacock Lounge, getting up and doing jam sessions when the live band invited people up to sing. She had long dreamed of a career in music and in February 1992, Thornton went to Germany. Her sister lived there with her U.S. Army husband and Thornton had dual citizenship in Germany and the United States. His uncle, Bob Chisolm, a singer and piano player, encouraged her to give the German nightclub circuit a try. She had been singing in a Macon, Ga., band, Danger Zone, pulling down $50 on a good night. However, Bob Chisolm told her that on a bad night in Germany she would make $150.
Thornton tried it and soon found work in studios recording demos. It was her recording of the song "Sweet Dreams" that caught the attention of producer Frank Farian, the mastermind of the infamous 1980s duo Milli Vanilli. Farian took her under his wing, teaming her with rapper Lane McCray in the duo La Bouche, which is French for "The Mouth". La Bouche went on to become one of the biggest Eurodance groups of the 90s, with a string of hits, worldwide.
She left La Bouche in February 2000 to be replaced by Natascha Wright while Lane remained a part of the project. She signed a record deal with Sony/Epic Records. Her first solo single was released in November 2000, titled "Love How You Love Me", a ballad (the CD-maxi includes a few dance remixes). Thornton presented her new single on November 29, 2000 on the RTL Spendenmarathon, and on December 1 at the Dome in Berlin. The follow-up single was entitled "Heartbeat".
On May 7, 2001, Thornton released her first (and only) solo album entitled Ready To Fly under the label X-Cell (distributed by Sony/Epic Records)The album featured a mixture of soul and dance tracks that showed off her powerful voice There was also a Special edition of the album released featuring some remix bonus tracks . She continued to do club appearances in the United States under the billing "Melanie Thornton, formerly of La Bouche".
Read more about this topic: Melanie Thornton
Famous quotes containing the words personal, life and/or career:
“It is very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)