"Sheila Chandra" has been added to your list of bookmarked artists
close
Sheila Chandra
Biography
One of the most unusual and successful singers of the '80s and '90s that has attempted to fuse the music of non-Western cultures with Western pop, Sheila Chandra began recording as a teenager in Monsoon. Of Indian ancestry, but born and raised in Britain, Chandra took lead vocals in the band, which pursued a sort of new wave-tinged raga-rock along the lines of George Harrison's explorations on Beatles tracks like "Love You To." The combination yielded an album and an unexpected British hit single, "Ever So Lonely," in the early '80s. Chandra, however, felt limited by the label's pressures for more commercial product, and signed to a small indie label, Indipop, which she felt would offer more freedom for her explorations as a solo artist.

In the mid-'80s, Chandra was astonishingly prolific, releasing five solo albums over a period of about two or three years that drifted away from the Asian dance-pop of Monsoon into a more personal sort of world fusion. Chandra also began to write much of her own material, usually in collaboration with producer and husband Steve Coe; Coe had also helped produce, write, and perform the music in Monsoon with Martin Smith, who also assisted on Chandra's early solo records.