Eddi Reader

The eldest of seven children from a poor area of Glasgow, Eddi Reader learned to play guitar when she was ten-years-old. In her teens she took her first steps towards being a musician busking on the streets of Glasgow, going on to join rock band Gang of Four before becoming a session singer, working with artists like Eurythmics, Alison Moyet, The Waterboys and Billy Mackenzie.

In 1988 Reader teamed up with Mark Nevin to form Fairground Attraction and they went to number one with their first single 'Perfect' while the album 'The First of a Million Kisses' climbed to number two in the UK Albums Chart. When the band acrimoniously split the following year without even completing their second album, Reader returned to Scotland to launch her solo career. This took off with her self-titled second album in 1994 which included the hit 'Patience of Angels' written by Boo Hewerdine, and won her a BRIT Award for Best Female Singer.

More albums followed, notably 'Candyfloss & Medicine' (1996), 'Angels & Electricity' (1998) and 'Simple Soul' (2001) with her career taking a new direction with her 'Songs of Robert Burns' album in 2003, bringing a fresh outlook to Scotland's national poet and earning her an MBE. However, she returned to a poppier style with 'Peacetime' in 2007 and 'Love Is The Way' in 2009. 2010 saw her record an Irish language version of 'Perfect' and later in that same year she released the live album 'Live in Japan' and in 2014 her tenth solo album 'Vagabond' charted at number 62 in the Irish charts.