About Eddi Reader
Sadenia "Eddi" Reader MBE is a Scottish singer-songwriter, known for her work as the lead vocalist of the folk and soft rock band Fairground Attraction and for an enduring solo career. She is the recipient of three Brit Awards. In 2003, she showcased the works of Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns.
Reader was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the daughter of a welder and the eldest of seven children; her brother Francis is vocalist with the band Trashcan Sinatras, and her grandmother Sadie Smith was a leading Scottish footballer. She was nicknamed Edna by her parents. Living at first in the district of Anderston, in a tenement slum demolished in 1965, the young Reader family moved to a two-bedroomed flat in the estate of Arden.
In 1976, due to overcrowding, the family was rehoused 25 miles from Glasgow, in a council development in Irvine, North Ayrshire. However, Reader returned to Glasgow to finish her compulsory schooling. She began playing the guitar at the age of ten, and started her musical career busking, first in Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street, then in the early 1980s in London and around Europe .
Back in Scotland, while finding factory work in Irvine and working part-time in Sirocco Recording Studio in Kilmarnock, she answered an advert in the music press and travelled to London to audition and join the post-punk band Gang of Four, who needed a backing vocalist for their appearance on British television music show The Old Grey Whistle Test and for their UK tour. This led to her first US tour with the band. After returning to the UK and leaving the band, she started working as a session vocalist in London, picking up work singing jingles for radio advertisements and singing with such acts as Eurythmics, The Waterboys, Billy Mackenzie of the Associates, John Foxx of Ultravox and Alison Moyet.
In 1984, Reader returned to the UK from Paris, where she had been working as a singer for the Romanian composer Vladimir Cosma. Through her contact with the brass section session musicians Kick Horns in London, she signed a recording contract with EMI, and recorded two singles with the disco group Outbar Squeek. Around the same time, she met and asked Mark E. Nevin, a guitarist and songwriter from the band Jane Aire and the Belvederes to write for her and they recorded two songs as 'The Academy of Fine Popular Music'. They subsequently formed Fairground Attraction, together with Simon Edwards and Roy Dodds . In 1988, the band signed to the RCA and BMG labels and released their first single, "Perfect", which became a UK number one, winning best single at the 1989 Brit Awards. Their debut studio album, The First of a Million Kisses, was also a success, reaching number two in the UK Albums Chart, and winning best album at the 1989 Brits.
This success was short-lived, however. In November 1989, after a break, during which Reader had her first child, Charlie, with her French-Algerian partner Milou, arguments arose within the group, and Nevin abandoned a recording session for their second studio album, which eventually led to the break-up of the band. A makeshift second album, a collection of B-sides and live tracks, Ay Fond Kiss, was rushed out the following year.
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