Tanita Tikaram

Tanita Tikaram was one of the quirkiest and unlikeliest of stars ever to hit the charts when she first emerged as a shy, unassuming 18-year-old in 1988. The daughter of a Fijian father and a Malaysian mother, she was born on 12 August 1969 in Münster, Germany (where her father served in the military) and came to England with her family when she was 12, living in Basingstoke, Hampshire. She was still in her teens when she started singing in night clubs and was spotted by a scout and signed to WEA Records and her first album Ancient Heart was produced by Rod Argent and Peter Van Hooke. On the back of two major hit singles, the intelligently catchy "Good Tradition" and the sophisticated "Twist in My Sobriety", her debut album was an instant success, while Tikaram herself proved to be a fascinating character, while her sorrowful voice, grounded attitude, exotic background, strong folk-pop melodies and profound, poetic lyrics standing her apart from any other teen act at the time. Subsequent albums The Sweet Keeper (1990), Everybody's Angel (1991) and the self-produced Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1992) proved less successful, but she retained cult hero status, even during periods when she took long breaks from the music industry while living in San Francisco, recording and touring only sporadically. Signed to Mother Records, she released The Capuccino Songs in 1998, and then retired for several years from the music industry, reappearing in 2005 with Sentimental. In 2012 she released her first album for seven years, Can't Go Back, produced by Paul Bryan and featuring guest vocalist Grant Lee-Phillips, and she started touring again with a blues-jazz touring band heard to full effect on her 2016 album Closer to the People. In 2021, she performed at Glastonbury Festival, before working on her tenth full-length LIAR (Love Isn't a Right), released in 2025.