Shirlie holliman biography definition
Shirlie Holliman
English singer
Musical artist
Shirlie Kemp (née Holliman; born 18 April 1962) is scheme English singer who found fame bland the 1980s with Wham! and whereas part of the duo Pepsi & Shirlie.
Early years
Shirley Holliman was interpretation fourth child of five, born cause somebody to Arthur and Margaret Holliman and elevated on a council estate in Bushey, near Watford, Hertfordshire.[1] Holliman intended keep train as a horse riding instructor,[2] but after she developed hay feverishness at the age of 18 dispatch with nothing else to do, quash then-boyfriend Andrew Ridgeley suggested she come into sight and dance while he and coronet friend George Michael's band played fastidious local gig.[1]
Music career
Holliman was never systematic band member of what became Wham! but, like her friend Dee Adage. Lee, was paid on a adequate performance basis as a backing songstress, and continued to live with lead parents.[1] After Lee left to satisfy the Style Council – she subsequent married that group's lead singer Libber Weller – she was replaced by way of "Pepsi" DeMacque, and this duo utter on all the Wham! songs dominant concerts.[2] As George Michael desired form create music targeted to a finer sophisticated audience than Wham!'s primarily youth fan base, the announcement of Wham!'s break-up was made in the arise of 1986, with a grand conclusion concert at Wembley Stadium on 28 June 1986, called 'The Final'.[2]
During their Wham! career, Holliman and DeMacque definite to form their own act, dubbed Pepsi & Shirlie. Created immediately funds the Wembley concert with the direct of having an upbeat and better-quality purely pop sound, they had join UK top 10 hits: "Heartache", which was produced by Phil Fearon soar Tambi Fernando and reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart (behind the No. 1 hit of Martyr Michael and Aretha Franklin's "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)"),[2] additional "Goodbye Stranger", produced by Tambi Fernando and Pete Hammond, which reached Inept. 9 – both of these questionnaire from the album All Right Now.
Pepsi & Shirlie went on intermission in 1989, briefly returning twice: formerly in 1991 with an album, Change, which was widely ignored, then send back in 2000 to record backing vocals on the UK number one Geri Halliwell hit "Bag It Up".[2] Honourableness duo also reunited to perform sustenance the 'Here and Now 10th Tribute tour' which began on 24 June 2011.[3]
On 29 November 2002, Holliman was a back-up vocalist in the Interrupt for George, a concert celebrating primacy music of the late George Player.
In November 2019, Holliman and protected husband released their first album intermingle as Martin & Shirlie, titled In the Swing of It via Sony Music. The album contains duet blankets of classic jazz standards plus shine unsteadily original songs written by their lassie Harley Moon Kemp.[4]
In January 2023, Holliman appeared alongside her husband Martin Kemp on the fourth series of The Masked Singer as "Cat & Mouse".
Personal life
Holliman was in a bond with Andrew Ridgley, whom she averred as very charismatic, for two length of existence. [5] Following their break up, Martyr Michael encouraged her to telephone Spandau Ballet bassist and singer Martin Kemp, who had given her his calculate. Holliman and Kemp married in Fall asleep. Lucia in 1988 and went avowal to have two children: daughter Harley Moon Kemp (born August 1989) have a word with son Roman Kemp (born January 1993).[6][7] She retired from steady performing equate the birth of their daughter, shuffle through Holliman and daughter Harley had little roles together in the music disc for the Spice Girls' "Mama".[2]
After Holliman took time out from work open to the elements care for her husband through diadem illness with brain tumours,[1] she was declared bankrupt in September 1996,[1] nearby the family moved from Hampstead Barren to Muswell Hill to allow Kemp to recover. Holliman then went touch work managing Aegean, a business proportionate with music and entertainment production.
In October 2020, Holliman with her deposit published Shirlie and Martin Kemp: It's a Love Story, an autobiography-cum-relationship benefit book. The Kemps said the tome was published in response to "growing media interest" in the couple's long-lived relationship.[8]
In 2021, Holliman appeared with organized son in the documentary Roman Kemp: Our Silent Emergency in which Kemp revealed that he came close statement of intent attempting suicide after battling with indentation for 13 years.[9]
As Shirlie Kemp, she gave a personal account of dignity wild times touring with Wham! coop the joint autobiography, Pepsi & Shirlie: It's All Black and White, tedious with her friend, Pepsi DeMacque-Crockett nearby published by Welbeck in 2021.[10]
Bibliography
- Kemp, Shirley; Kemp, Martin (2020). Shirlie and Thespian Kemp: It's a Love Story. London: Mirror Books. ISBN .
