Taylor Dayne

There isn’t a pop star alive that wouldn’t kill for Taylor Dayne’s first run of singles. She began her solo singing career after leaving college, where she’d fronted a few rock bands who’d gone nowhere fast. Billed as Les Lee (a shortened version of her birth-name Leslie Wunderman) she released two singles in 1986 and ’87, “I’m The One You Want” and “Tell Me Can You Love Me”, respectively. While they weren’t hits at any level, they did something far more important, and got her signed to Arista Records and in November 1987, her imperial phase began with her single “Tell It To Me Heart”. This began a run of nine top twenty singles, seven of which hurtled into the top ten and five of them breached the top five.

This happened over a period of six years where Dayne became one of the hottest pop stars in the world, and one of the period’s biggest pin-ups to boot. “Tell It To My Heart” was a hit all over the world, topping the charts in Sweden, West Germany and New Zealand while surging into the top three in the U.K. Normally, this kind of success would be impossible to replicate, let alone better, but her debut album’s next three singles would equal and then better her debut single’s success. She became such a big name that she spent most of 1988 supporting Michael Jackson on his “Bad” World Tour, and even then, it would get even bigger with her next album, 1989’s “Can’t Fight Fate”.

The album would contain her first number one in the form of its second single, 1990’s “Love Will Lead You Back”, and it’s follow up singles would also chart strongly, at number four for “I’ll Be Your Shelter”, and number 12 for “Heart Of Stone”. Unfortunately, in the three years she spent following up her debut she lost her commercial golden touch and hasn’t had a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 since 1993’s “Send Me A Lover”. The 90’s were still kind to her, as she had a string of chart topping hits on the US Dance music charts and started a highly respectable acting career.

Since then, Taylor Dayne has remained one of the most beloved pop stars of her generation. She has a back catalogue that could make the stars of today blush and the artistic diversity to take on the Dance charts just as easily as the work of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, as she did with her star turn in Cats on Broadway. She’s still making the best records of her career to this day and can perform live with the best of them, and for that, she comes highly recommended.