Sheena Shirley Easton (; born 27 April 1959) is a Scottish singer and actress. She came into the public eye in an episode of the first British musical reality television series The Big Time: Pop Singer, which recorded her attempts to gain a record deal and her eventual signing with the EMI label. Easton's first two singles, "Modern Girl" and "9 to 5" (later released as "Morning Train (Nine to Five)" in the United States), both entered the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart simultaneously. She became one of the most successful British female recording artists of the 1980s.
A six-time Grammy Award nominee, Easton is a two-time winner, winning the award for Best New Artist in 1982 and Best Mexican-American Performance in 1985 for her duet with Mexican singer Luis Miguel on the 1984 single "Me Gustas Tal Como Eres". She has recorded 15 studio albums, released a total of 55 singles and had 20 consecutive US singles, including 15 Top 40 hits, seven Top 10's and one number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1981 and 1991. She has received five RIAA-certified Gold albums and one Platinum album. In Canada, she scored three Gold albums and two Platinum albums. With 25 Top 40 international hit singles, Easton has sold over 40 million records worldwide.
Easton became the first and only recording artist in Billboard history to have a Top 5 hit on each of Billboards primary singles charts: "Morning Train (Nine to Five)" (Pop and Adult Contemporary), "We've Got Tonight" with Kenny Rogers (Country and Adult Contemporary) and "Sugar Walls" (R&B and Dance).
Easton's other hit singles include the James Bond-theme "For Your Eyes Only", "You Could Have Been with Me", "Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair)", "Almost Over You", "Strut", "U Got the Look" and "The Arms of Orion" with Prince, "The Lover in Me" and "What Comes Naturally". She has worked with prominent singers, writers and producers, such as Prince, Christopher Neil, Kenny Rogers, David Foster, Luis Miguel, L.A. Reid, Babyface, Patrice Rushen and Nile Rodgers.
Life and career
1959–1980: Early life and career beginnings
Sheena Shirley Orr was born on 27 April 1959, at Bellshill Maternity Hospital in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, the youngest of six children of Annie and steel mill labourer Alex Orr. She has two brothers, Robert and Alex, and three sisters, Marilyn, Anessa, and Morag. Her earliest-known public performance as a singer was in 1964 at the age of five, when she sang "Early One Morning" for her uncle and aunt and various relatives at the couple's 25th wedding anniversary celebration.
Easton's father died in 1969 and her mother had to support the family. According to Easton's website, despite her mother's heavy workload she was always available for her children: "Sheena always speaks very highly of her mum and the wonderful job she did in bringing up her and her siblings, including teaching them all to read at home before they were even enrolled in school."
Easton did not consider a singing career until she saw the movie The Way We Were, with Barbra Streisand. Streisand's singing over the opening credits "overtook" the young girl and convinced her that what she wanted most was to be a singer and to have the same effect on others.
Her top grades in school earned her a scholarship to attend the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, where she trained from 1975 to 1979 as a speech and drama teacher by day, while singing with a band called "Something Else" by night at local clubs. She chose to study teaching rather than performing, because it was a course of study that would let her perfect her craft as a singer.
In 1979, she married Sandi Easton, the first of her four husbands. They divorced after eight months, and Sheena decided to keep the surname Easton. That year, one of her tutors coaxed her into auditioning for Esther Rantzen, producer of the BBC programme The Big Time. Rantzen was planning a documentary film to chronicle a relative unknown's rise to pop-music stardom. Easton was selected as the subject for the programme; EMI executives awarded her a contract, and Christopher Neil was assigned as her recording producer. Deke Arlon became her first manager, and Easton spent much of 1980 being followed by camera crews, who filmed her throughout the process of her audition through to making her first EMI single, "Modern Girl". In the course of the filming, she met and sang for Dorothy Squires, Dusty Springfield and Lulu, whose manager Marion Massey told her that she saw Easton as a potential TV star with her own series, but not as a pop singer for the 1980s as she lacked "rugged individuality".