Amanda Lear first surfaced in the early '70s as a fetishistically clothed album-cover model for Roxy Music. She was said to be a transsexual but, as she told Interview magazine, that was just a ruse dreamed up by her sponsor, David Bowie, to draw attention. Her importance to disco fans, however, began in 1977, when she recorded I Am a Photograph... [+] Read More

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C+C Music Factory wasn't really a group -- it was the product of Robert Clivillés and David Cole, two pop-savvy dance producers. In 1989, Clivillés and Cole hired all the singers and created all the tracks for Gonna Make You Sweat, C+C Music Factory's first album. While it was prepackaged, it wasn't necessarily faceless; in Freedom Williams, the... [+] Read More

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Like the allied powers of dance music, Robert Clivillés and David Cole separately enjoyed moderate success producing and remixing tracks for various artists, but together they were a dynamic force that deeply affected the sound of late '80s and early '90s dance music. After meeting on the Manhattan club scene in the late '70s, the young pair... [+] Read More

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Eurythmics were one of the most successful duos to emerge in the early '80s. Where most of their British synth pop contemporaries disappeared from the charts as soon as new wave faded away in 1984, Eurythmics continued to have hits until the end of the decade, making vocalist Annie Lennox a star in her own right, as well as establishing... [+] Read More

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Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a pioneering force in avant-garde rock and in the worldbeat genre, chalking up significant achievements in the latter field well before it existed. Tremendously precocious in an artistic sense, Mercier Descloux dropped out of art studies in order to co-manage a punk boutique and record store in Paris with future ZE... [+] Read More

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Nile Rodgers' contribution to popular music has been extremely significant, whether it be penning some of the most influential and popular songs of the disco era with Chic, or producing countless hits for a wide variety of other artists. Born September 19, 1952 in New York, New York, it was clear that Rodgers possessed exceptional musical talent... [+] Read More

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Theirs is the ultimate musical marriage, a partnership that, once formed, re-etched the very landscape of not just Jamaican music, but the entire world's. Such hyperbole is oftentimes rolled out by publicity machines whenever two musical talents come together, but in the case of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare, it really was an... [+] Read More

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Over the years, the Pretenders became a vehicle for guitarist/vocalist Chrissie Hynde's songwriting, yet it was a full-fledged band when it was formed in the late '70s. With their initial records, the group crossed the bridge between punk/new wave and Top 40 pop more than any other band, recording a series of hard, spiky singles that were also... [+] Read More

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One of the most commercially successful producers of the 1980s, Trevor Horn popularized a signature modernist sound notable for its early use of samplers. Born July 15, 1949 in Hertfordshire, England, his father was a double bass player in a local orchestra; Horn soon picked up the bass himself, and as a teen played in a variety of area bands.... [+] Read More

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