“Baby Blue Eyes”, Joan Amatrading

This way: Baby Blue Eyes

Joan Armatrading is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. Her first major commercial success came with her third and fourth albums, Joan Armatrading (1976) and Show Some Emotion (1977), and she continues to play live and record studio albums. A three-time Grammy Award nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996. 

Armatrading, the third of six children, was born in 1950 in the town of Basseterre in what was then the British colony of Saint Christopher and Nevis. Her father was a carpenter and her mother a housewife. When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham in England, sending Armatrading to live with her grandmother on the West Indian island of Antigua.

Armatrading left school at the age of 15 to help support her family. She lost her first job (as a typist and comptometer operator) after taking her guitar to work and playing it during tea-breaks. Armatrading's debut album Whatever's for Us, released by Cube Records in 1972. Nestor wrote the lyrics to eleven of the 14 songs on the album, while Armatrading wrote the lyrics to three of them, performed all the vocals, wrote all the music and played an array of instruments on the album. Although Nestor was credited as co-lyricist, Cube regarded Armatrading as the more likely star material. These events produced a tension that broke up the partnership.

[Spotify] Baby Blue Eyes