Patty Smyth facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Patty Smyth
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Smyth in April 2011 during the Tribeca Film Festival Vanity Fair party
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Patricia Smyth |
| Born | June 26, 1957 New York City, U.S. |
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| Years active | 1981–present |
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Patricia Smyth (born June 26, 1957) is an American singer and songwriter. She first came into national attention with the rock band Scandal and went on to record and perform as a solo artist. Her distinctive voice and new wave image gained broad exposure through video recordings aired on cable music video channels such as MTV. Her debut solo album Never Enough was well received, and generated a pair of Top 100 hits. In the early 1990s she reached the top 10 with the hit single "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough," a duet with Don Henley of Eagles. She performed and co-wrote with James Ingram the song "Look What Love Has Done" for the 1994 motion picture Junior. The work earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Song Written for Visual Media, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.
Musical career
Solo career
Following the end of Scandal, Smyth was invited by her friend Eddie Van Halen to join the band Van Halen to replace David Lee Roth as lead singer. However, she declined the offer, because she was eight months pregnant and "It was just not the right time for me," she says now. ..... She guest-appeared on the Hooters 1985 album Nervous Night on the song "Where Do the Children Go" as an accompanying vocalist.
Smyth released her first solo album, Never Enough, in 1987. It contained her version of the Tom Waits song "Downtown Train," which Rod Stewart would make a hit three years later, and the title track "Never Enough," which was co-written with members of the Hooters and based on a song of the same title that Hooters members Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman had written for their earlier band, Baby Grand. In 1988 she contributed the Diane Warren penned "I Run Right Back" to the Caddyshack II soundtrack. She put out another solo effort in 1992, the eponymous Patty Smyth. Off of that effort, she secured a hit record via a duet with Don Henley of the Eagles, titled "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough." This peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was certified gold for sales of 500,000. The album, also certified gold, featured an additional US Top 40 hit with "No Mistakes" and also spawned the minor hit "I Should Be Laughing." Smyth had previously recorded with Henley as a backing singer on several songs on his albums Building the Perfect Beast and The End of the Innocence.
Smyth subsequently co-wrote the 1994 song "Look What Love Has Done," nominated for a Grammy and an Academy Award after its inclusion in the soundtrack to the feature film Junior. Further soundtrack commissions resulted in her writing and composing the theme tune, "Wish I Were You," to the 1998 feature film Armageddon. (Her husband, John McEnroe, claimed in his autobiography that she was inspired to write the song by his own attempt at a musical career; she was struck by his excitement at playing music, when her own feelings about the music industry were much more ambivalent.) In 1999, Smyth sang lead vocals on "Ode To Billie Joe," a cover of the 1967 Bobbie Gentry hit, on the album Smokin' Section by Tom Scott & The L.A. Express.
In 2015, to promote the release of her Christmas album called Come On December, she crowd-funded a campaign to support the Headstrong Project with all the money raised on the pre-orders of her album going to the non-profit. The album featured the single "Broken," and the music video for the single was released just before Veterans Day, and was filmed on the grounds of a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter. The album was released on November 20, 2015.
Personal life
Smyth was married to musician Richard Hell in 1985–86; they had a daughter, Ruby. She met tennis player John McEnroe in 1993; their daughter Anna was born in 1995, and the couple married in 1997. They have since had another daughter, Ava.
Smyth and McEnroe live in a duplex on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Discography
Albums
| Year | Album | Peak chart positions | ||||||||||||
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AUS |
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| 1987 | Never Enough | 66 | — | |||||||||||
| 1992 | Patty Smyth | 47 | 94 | |||||||||||
| 1998 | Greatest Hits – Featuring Scandal | — | — | |||||||||||
| 2015 | Come On December | — | — | |||||||||||
| 2020 | It's About Time | — | — | |||||||||||
| "—" denotes a recording that did not chart. | ||||||||||||||
Singles
| Year | Single | Peak chart positions | Album | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US |
US Main |
US AC |
AUS |
CAN |
CAN AC |
UK |
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| 1987 | "Never Enough" | 61 | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | Never Enough |
| "Downtown Train" | 95 | 40 | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| "Isn't It Enough" | — | 26 | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 1992 | "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough" (with Don Henley) | 2 | — | 1 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 22 | Patty Smyth |
| "No Mistakes" (uncredited harmony vocal by Don Henley) | 33 | — | 4 | — | — | — | — | ||
| 1993 | "I Should Be Laughing" | 86 | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| "Shine" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 1994 | "Look What Love Has Done" | 106 | — | 23 | — | — | — | — | Non-album single |
| 2015 | "Broken" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Come On December |
| 2020 | "Drive" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | It's About Time |
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart | |||||||||
See also
In Spanish: Patty Smyth para niños
