Career
Hawkins's debut album, Tongues and Tails, was released in 1992. It achieved both worldwide commercial success and critical acclaim, earning her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 1993. The single "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles' chart in the USA, and was also a top 20 hit in the UK. As a result of this success Hawkins was asked to perform "I Want You" during "Bobfest" a concert held on October 16, 1992 in Madison Square Garden honoring Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary as a musician.
Whaler, her second album, was released in 1994. Produced by Stephen Lipson, it also contained a US Top 10 hit, "As I Lay Me Down," and made gold status. Three singles from the album made the UK top 40, including "Right Beside You" which peaked at #13. It reached number 2 in the Dutch Top 40
A 1998 documentary by Gigi Gaston, titled The Cream Will Rise, followed Hawkins during one of her tours and captured her struggle to deal with past troubles with her family, including her mother and brother. Music and riffs by Hawkins were included throughout the film.
Also in 1998, Hawkins's record company at the time, Sony Music, delayed the release of her third album. Its executives were unhappy with the finished product, and wanted Hawkins to rework some of the material. In particular, they were insisting that Hawkins remove a banjo track from one of the songs. Hawkins refused to accommodate them, citing artistic integrity as her main reason. After a lengthy battle between Hawkins and the company, the album, Timbre, was eventually released in 1999, though Sony declined to promote it. Hawkins subsequently left the label and founded her own label, Trumpet Swan Productions. In 2001, Timbre was re-released on Hawkins' label, now as a 2-disc set that contained new songs, demos, remixes, and videos.
Her first independently recorded and released album, Wilderness, was released in 2004.
As of 2012, Hawkins is starring as Janis Joplin in the play, Room 105, which was written and directed by her long-time longtime partner and manager, Gigi Gaston. After another long hiatus she is also releasing her fifth album of all new material in 2012, The Crossing.
Read more about this topic: Sophie B. Hawkins
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)