Sam Phillips (musician) - Career

Career

She began her musical career in the early 1980s, singing background vocals for Christian artists Mark Heard and Randy Stonehill. Phillips was signed to a solo contract with Myrrh Records - under her given name - and recorded four Christian pop albums, Beyond Saturday Night, Dancing with Danger, Black and White in a Grey World and, finally, The Turning, which teamed her with producer and future husband, T-Bone Burnett. Several became Top 10 singles on Christian radio and Myrrh records promoted her as "the Christian Cyndi Lauper". Phillips was never comfortable with this image, and it was a bone of contention between her and her label. She began using the name "Sam" professionally in 1988 when she left Myrrh Records and signed with Virgin Records in order to distance herself from her prior persona.

With The Indescribable Wow Philips moved into mainstream music. The album featured the orchestrations of Van Dyke Parks. Cruel Inventions was released in 1991, and included a guest performance by Elvis Costello. 1994's Martinis and Bikinis was widely praised by music critics and was nominated for a Grammy Award; her second nomination (the first was as Leslie Phillips).

In 1995, Phillips made her film debut in the Bruce Willis blockbuster Die Hard with a Vengeance, in the role of a mute terrorist. In 1996, Phillips released Omnipop (It's Only a Flesh Wound Lambchop), which featured a song co-written by R.E.M.. Phillips made a cameo appearance in the 1997 Wim Wenders film The End of Violence, singing part of the song "Animals on Wheels" from Omnipop. After releasing a contractually obligated "best of" album for Virgin in 1999, the Virgin Records dropped Phillips from its roster.

In 2001, Phillips signed with Nonesuch Records and released a stripped-down acoustic album called Fan Dance, which featured some of the her most critically acclaimed songwriting. Phillips also began writing music for and scoring the television series Gilmore Girls, and appeared in the final episode of season six, performing "Taking Pictures" from her Fan Dance album. In 2004, she released A Boot and a Shoe, another collection of acoustic cabaret songs.

After the release of A Boot and a Shoe, Phillips and husband/producer T-Bone Burnett divorced, although they continued to work together to finish her album. Her album, Don't Do Anything, was self produced and released in 2008.

In October 2009, Phillips launched The Long Play, a music subscription service offering digital releases without a record label. The first subscription only EP, Hypnotists in Paris, was recorded with the Section Quartet and a Christmas collection Cold Dark Night, Magic for Everyone, Old Tin Pan, and Days of the One Night Stands followed, with the full length album Cameras in the Sky being released in early 2010. In Spring of 2011 she issued Solid State, a public CD release comprising 13 of the best songs from her subscription service.

She is currently finishing work on her next album titled "Pretty Time Bomb" which she describes as being "A nostalgic sort of dream of being a pop star in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. It’s a sweet kind of album and I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know what compelled me to make it. It’s probably a bad idea, but everytime I listen to what I’ve done, it makes me really happy. So I figure, that must mean something and I should go ahead and put it out there."

In 2012, it was announced that she would be reunited with Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino by scoring music for the American TV show Bunheads.