Sheena Shirley Easton (; born 27 April 1959) is a Scottish singer, songwriter and actress who rose to prominence in the reality television series The Big Time: Pop Singer (1980). Her record sales worldwide are estimated at 20 million copies, and she became the first and only artist in Billboard history to have a top-five hit on each of the Billboard primary singles charts. Her commercial prominence in the 1980s led to collaborations with Prince, Kenny Rogers, Babyface, L.A. Reid and Nile Rodgers.
Born and raised in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Easton signed a record deal with EMI Records, and her debut single, "Modern Girl", was released in February 1980. It reached number 8 in the United Kingdom and number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. Her follow–up single, "9 to 5", was equally successful, peaking at number 3 in the United Kingdom whilst in the United States it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It achieved commercial success in a number of international territories, and was certified Gold in Canada, United Kingdom and the United States. Her debut album, Take My Time (1981), performed well commercially, and by mid–1981, she had recorded and released "For Your Eyes Only" as the theme song for the James Bond movie of the same name.
She received the Grammy Award for Best New Artist at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1982, before her sales experienced a slight decline until her fifth album, A Private Heaven (1984). It marked a significant change in Easton's image towards a "sexy pop singer". The new look secured a return to prominence for Easton, with the albums lead single "Strut" reaching the top 10 in Argentina, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. She released "Sugar Walls", written by Prince under his pseudonym Alexander Nevermind, which was deemed controversial and met with reluctance due to its sexually explicit nature. Easton collaborated with country singer Kenny Rogers in 1982 on the release "We've Got Tonight". Throughout the mid-1980s, Easton's career had steadily declined in the United Kingdom, whilst her commercial dominance in the United States was more apparent.
Easton won the Grammy Award for Best Mexican-American Performance at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards for her collaboration with Luis Miguel on the single "Me Gustas Tal Como Eres". Her ninth album, The Lover in Me, was released in 1988 and became her first album to chart in on the UK Albums Charts in five years. The title track reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and reached number 1 on the Billboard Dance Singles Sales. The New York Times has described Easton as an "80s pop phenomenon", whilst also being regarded across the industry as one of the most defining and recognisable voices of the 1980s. As her career developed, Easton moved to the United States, and in time lost her Scottish accent. She infamously received heckles at the Big Day Out concert in Glasgow in 1990, following an unannounced schedule change.
Life and career 1959–1980: Early life and career beginnings
Sheena Shirley Orr was born on 27 April 1959, at Bellshill Maternity Hospital in 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 when she was 5 and 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, but 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 movie or TV star with her own series, but not as a pop singer for the 1980s as she lacked "rugged individuality".
The encounter with Massey (then Marion London), at which Lulu was present, was filmed and included in the broadcast, at which time Massey was not entirely incorrect, as "Modern Girl" flopped on its release, peaking at number 56 in just three weeks on the UK Singles Chart in April 1980. However, the conversation centred around image, with Lulu politely interjecting to say, "She's such a good-looking girl. You could actually do a lot with her." Once the programme aired in August 1980, "Modern Girl" was reissued and the track and its follow up "Nine to Five" both leapt into the top 10, seemingly disproving Massey's prediction, although Easton's look was noticeably different after the filmed conversation. A revised and extended version of this episode of The Big Time, broadcast in 1981, concluded with news of Easton's breaking into the American market.
1981–1982: Take My Time and James Bond
Easton's first single, the disco-tinged soft-synth-pop tune, "Modern Girl", was released in the UK before The Big Time aired, reaching number 56. At the end of the show, Easton was still unsure of her future as a singer. The question was resolved soon after the show aired, when her second single, "9 to 5", reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart and was certified a Gold single in 1980.
"9 to 5" was Easton's first single release in the United States, although it was renamed "Morning Train (Nine To Five)" for its release in the US and Canada to avoid confusion with Dolly Parton's hit movie title song "9 to 5". "Morning Train (Nine to Five)" became Easton's first and only number 1 hit in the US and topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts in Billboard magazine. "Modern Girl" was released as the follow-up and peaked at number 18, and before 1981 was over she had a Top 10 hit in both the US and UK with the Academy Award-nominated James Bond movie theme "For Your Eyes Only". The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1982. Easton's US success resulted in her winning the Grammy Award for "Best New Artist" for 1982. Easton actually appears in the opening credits of For Your Eyes Only, performing the song; as of 2026, she remains the only Bond theme singer to be featured in this way.Madonna, who recorded the theme song for Die Another Day, has a small role in the film itself, but is not shown performing the song on screen.
Easton's first three US albums, Sheena Easton (1981) (retitled edition of Take My Time), You Could Have Been with Me (1981), and Madness, Money & Music (1982), were all in the same soft rock/pop vein. The title track from You Could Have Been with Me made it in to the US top 15; however, by the end of 1982, she saw her sales slumping. Easton was one of the first artists to record "Wind Beneath My Wings" (included on Madness, Money & Music), which later was a hit for Bette Midler. In 1982, Easton undertook her first US tour. Her performance in Los Angeles was videotaped and broadcast on HBO and later released on VHS and Laserdisc as Sheena Easton Live at the Palace, Hollywood. On 8 November 1982, she appeared in the Royal Variety Performance in front of the Queen Mother singing "Maybe This Time".Radio Times 14 November 1982
1983–1987: Best Kept Secret and works with Prince
In January 1983, Easton duetted with Kenny Rogers and had a top 10 hit in the US with "We've Got Tonight", a cover of the Bob Seger song. The recording also earned her a number 1 single on the Country chart, and it reached the UK Top 30. Around the time of her hit record with Rogers, Easton headlined Act One, a one-hour variety special broadcast on NBC that featured Rogers and a cameo appearance by Johnny Carson. October 1983 saw the release of the album Best Kept Secret and its first single, the synthesized dance-pop tune "Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair)", became her fourth Top 10 hit. The single was Grammy-nominated for "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance" of 1983. The follow-up single, "Almost Over You", reached the US Top 30 and was a number 4 AC chart hit. "Almost Over You" was very popular in Asia and was covered by Chinese singer Cass Pang. It also became a hit on the Country charts for Lila McCann in 1998.
In 1984, Easton recorded a Spanish-language single, "Me Gustas Tal Como Eres" ("I Like You Just the Way You Are"), a duet with Mexican star Luis Miguel. The single earned her a second Grammy, this time for Best Mexican-American Performance. The track was taken from the album Todo Me Recuerda a Ti (1984), and reissued by Capitol/EMI-Latin in 1989, which featured Spanish-language covers of seven previous Easton recordings and three new tracks. In the same year, she also made a transformation into a sexy dance-pop siren, changing her performance style in the process. She was rewarded with the biggest-selling US album of her career, RIAA certified gold & platinum A Private Heaven (1984), and her sixth Top 10 US single, "Strut". In the UK, however, the move was not a commercial success, as Easton would find herself shut out of the UK top 75 for the next three years.
Her career was increasing, particularly in the US, where Easton was again nominated for a Grammy Award, this time for "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance" in 1984. She was also one of the first artists to have a music video banned because of its lyrics rather than its imagery; some broadcasters refused to air the sexually risqué "Sugar Walls", which had been written for her by Prince (using the pseudonym Alexander Nevermind). "Sugar Walls" was named by Tipper Gore of the Parents Music Resource Center as one of the "Filthy Fifteen", a list of songs deemed indecent because of their lyrics, alongside Prince's own "Darling Nikki". The song eventually hit number 3 on the R&B singles chart, number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 1 on the Billboard Dance Chart in 1985.