|
Shakespears Sister was a band formed by Irish born former Bananarama singer/songwriter Siobhan Fahey and American musician Marcella Detroit. The band formed in 1988, the same year that Fahey left Bananarama. The name is taken from the title of the song "Shakespeare's Sister" by The Smiths, which in turn refers to a section of Virginia Woolf's feminist essay A Room of One's Own in which Woolf argues that had William Shakespeare a sister of equal genius, as a woman she would not have had the opportunity to make use of it.
History Shakespears Sister released two albums as a duo, Sacred Heart and Hormonally Yours. The band's single "Stay" is their best known work, achieving number one in both the UK (for eight weeks, one of the longest in chart history) and Ireland singles charts. It was their highest entry in the UK charts, being the only time they entered the top five. The single also became their biggest U.S. hit, reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1992. The accompanying music video was also a hit, if somewhat controversial.(Recently featured in Channel4's Top 100 Music Videos). In it, Fahey fights over the fate of a dying man in an allegory of life and death that mirrored her own internal struggles. The imagery in the video was seen as a depiction of witchcraft/raising the dead so was banned in Germany, heightening the track's profile. After a year-long worldwide tour through 1992 Fahey cancelled further European touring due to physical and emotional exhaustion and, subsequently admitted herself into a psychiatric unit with severe depression. In 1993 one of Fahey's favourite songs "My 16th Apology" was released as a single, to moderate success, followed by the quasi-singles "Prehistoric Daze" from The Flintstones soundtrack in 1994, and "Waiting" from the Sadie Frost/Jude Law film Shopping in 1995. In 1996 Fahey resurfaced again as Shakespears Sister with the single "I Can Drive", a single picked by the record company instead of Fahey's choice of the arguably superior "Do I Scare You". After the single charted at number thirty and London Records refused to release the full album, Fahey insisted upon being dropped from the label, leaving the album unreleased. In 2003, Fahey regained the master tapes from those sessions. #3, recorded in 1995-1997 , was finally given an independent release in 2004 after London Records originally shelved the project. A greatest hits CD/DVD retrospective (The Best of Shakespears Sister) was also released in 2004, containing all of the group's singles and music videos, as well as tracks intended for the A recurrent theme of many of the early Shakespears Sister songs involve departure ("You're History", "Goodbye Cruel World") and blame ("You Made Me Come to This", "I Don't Care"). In interviews, Bananarama members Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward have alluded to these songs being about them. Albums Singles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |