| Name |
Lynsey Depaul |
| Height |
|
| Naionality |
English |
| Date of Birth |
11-June-1950 |
| Place of Birth |
Cricklewood, London, England |
| Famous for |
Singing |
Lynsey de Paul is an English singer-songwriter. Allmusic journalist Craig Harris stated that "one of the first successful female singer-songwriters in England, de Paul has had an illustrious career".
de Paul took an unusual route to becoming the UK's first commercially successful female singer-songwriter. While attending Hornsey College of Art, and wanting to leave home, she started to design album sleeves for artists which required her to listen to the tracks. From income earned from album sleeve design, she got her first flat, where she turned to songwriting. Three of her earliest songs were co-written with Don Gould and recorded by Jack Wild: "Takin' It Easy" and "Bring It on Back to Me" from the album Everything's Coming Up Roses which was released by Jack in 1971.[citation needed] Another song copenned by Lynsey, this time with Edward Adamberry called "E.O.I.O." was recorded by Jack as a track on his 1972 album A Beautiful World and also released as a single by The Beads.
After these initial successes, de Paul was contracted to ATV-Kirshner music publishing, located above the Peter Robinson's store on Oxford Street, where she joined a group of professional songwriters that included Barry Blue and Ron Roker, resulting in revenues from songs recorded by other artists from 1971. Her breakthrough came early in 1972 as the co-writer (with Ron Roker) of The Fortunes' top 10 U.K. hit, "Storm in a Teacup". She was credited as 'L. Rubin' on the record. Around this time, she was also had chart success in the Netherlands as the writer of "On the Ride", a Top 30 hit by the Continental Uptight Band.
A few months later she was propelled into the limelight as the performer of her own hit song "Sugar Me", which reached the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart (#5), as well as the top of the singles charts in the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium, the first UK female singer-songwriter to do this. "Sugar Me" was covered in the US by Nancy Sinatra and Claudine Longet, and more recent cover versions are still being released (see below). Noted for her keyboard skills, ability to write catchy songs and sultry looks, De Paul went on to be a regular chart and TV fixture over the next five years. Her follow up single to "Sugar Me" was the amusing "Getting a Drag" (UK #18) which was a light hearted dig at the glam rock scene. After the relatively poor chart performance of her third single "All Night" which was written with Ron Roker and peaked in the UK at #56, de Paul returned to the U.K. Top 20 with "Won't Somebody Dance With Me" which she always felt should have been her third single. She was the first woman to be awarded an Ivor Novello Award for this ballad, which was also a hit in Ireland and the Netherlands. The BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Ed Stewart spoke the words "May I Have The Pleasure Of This Dance" near the end of the record (he often played the record on his Junior Choice programme on Saturday mornings) although Tony Blackburn and Dave Lee Travis spoke these words when she appeared on BBC Television's Top of the Pops. De Paul recorded the female lyric to Mott The Hoople's album track version of "Roll Away the Stone", but she was replaced by female trio Thunderthighs on the hit single version of the song. In 1973, when Mick Ralphs left Mott the Hoople, his replacement Luther Grosvenor was contractually obliged to change his name - de Paul suggested Ariel Bender. After appointing Don Arden, her new manager at the end of 1973, de Paul released "Ooh I Do", which hit the charts in the UK, Netherlands and Japan. The song's co-writer, Barry Blue, also recorded a version of the song as an album track.
