Alannah Myles biography
Alannah Myles (born December 25, 1958, Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, the daughter of Canadian broadcast pioneer William Douglas Myles. In 1989, she released her eponymous debut album. In 1990, "Black Velvet", a single from that album, was a worldwide hit and won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female.
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" written by Alannah 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.
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