WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Shannon

For a time in the mid-80’s, Shannon really did let the music play!

Brenda Greene (b.Washington DC in 1958) is an American singer, who used her middle name Shannon to carve out a career in the mid 1980’s. beginning as a session singer, she was quickly plucked and signed by Atlantic Records and in 1983, she recorded “Let The Music Play”. The song became a top ten hit in America and made the top twenty internationally, including the UK in early 1984. The track was the first to come from her self-titled debut album, which followed in 1984 and would shift over a million and a half copies worldwide. It would produce two US Dance chart number ones, the other being “Give Me Tonight” (a UK top thirty hit) and a number three with “My Heart’s Divided”. Shannon would score a third UK top thirty single with “Sweet Somebody” later in 1984.

Her 1985 follow up, “Do You Wanna Get Away?”, kicked off with a third US Dance chart topper with the title track, although the singles “Stronger Together” and a cover of “Urgent” were less successful, with the album itself stopping at No.92 on the US album chart. Shannon released “Love Goes All the Way” in 1986 along with the title track and “Prove Me Right” as singles, the latter becoming her last R&B chart entry of the 1980’s. She recorded “Criminal” for the soundtrack of the film ‘Fatal Beauty’, and apart from a couple of singles in the mid-90’s, Shannon didn’t surface again, on her own, until 2000, when she returned to the Dance chart top three with a new mix of “Give Me Tonight”.

Shannon did get another chart hit in 1998 when she provided vocals on DJ and producer Sash!’s single “Move Mania”, which peaked at No.8 in the UK, her highest and her first top ten hit there! The single was a big hit across Europe and made the US Dance chart top thirty. Shannon released a new remix of “Let The Music Play” in 2001, which came from a new collection called “The Best Is Yet To Come”…and indeed it did in 2006 when she released her first new studio album for twenty years, “A Beauty Returns”. That is, to date, it from her. She now enjoys the quiet life and holidays, as well as being a voting member for the Grammy jury and occasionally making appearances at 80’s festivals, when she let’s the music play for everyone.