Jennifer Rush

Early life

Rush was born Heidi Stern in the New York City borough of Queens, daughter of singer Barbara and opera singer Maurice Stern. She has two older brothers, Robert "Bobby" Stern and Stephen "Stevie" Stern (both professional musicians). Rush and her brothers lived with their mother until she was a toddler, and then with their father and his second wife on the Upper West Side of the borough of Manhattan. Rush studied violin at the Juilliard School and also took piano lessons, although she did not enjoy these instruments and instead took to playing the guitar in private. When Rush was nine, the Stern family moved to Germany. Rush returned to the United States a few years later to live with her mother's family. She also lived for a time in Seattle, Washington, when her father was briefly a professor of voice at the University of Washington.

Career

Rush's debut studio album, titled with her legal name of Heidi Stern, was released locally in Seattle, Washington, in 1979. After meeting singer, songwriter, and producer Gene McDaniels in Seattle, she went to Los Angeles to record demo songs with him. She credits McDaniels as being her first and most influential mentor as a songwriter and a singer. In 1982, following McDaniels's persistence, Rush moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, where her father was an opera singer for a short period of time. She was then advised to change her name, which she did legally.

Rush was first signed to CBS Songs Publishing Company as a songwriter in Frankfurt, Germany. At that time she was working for almost two years full time in the military in Munich. She has never had vocal training but she is proficient in music theory due to her two years in the children's orchestra as first violinist.

CBS Records (1982–1991)

Rush's debut single with CBS Records International was "Tonight", which was released in West Germany under her birth name of Heidi Stern in 1982. The single did not enter any charts and she changed her stage name to Jennifer Rush the following year. In 1983, Rush released her first two singles under her new stage name, titled "Into My Dreams" and "Come Give Me Your Hand", both of which Rush co-wrote with producers Gunther Mende and Candy DeRouge. Neither song entered the music charts. In February and March 1984, Rush toured with the Berlin Philharmonic on a series of James Bond-themed concerts. She performed covers of "Goldfinger", "The Man with the Golden Gun", "For Your Eyes Only" and "Thunderball" at the concerts, and astonished the audience with her singing.

Rush's chart breakthrough came with the single "25 Lovers", which entered the West German singles chart in June 1984, spending 20 weeks on the chart and reaching its highest position at number 25. Her next hit single was "Ring of Ice", which entered the German singles chart in October 1984 and peaked at number 22. As with her first two singles, these songs were co-written by Rush with producers Gunther Mende and Candy deRouge. Mende and DeRouge were the producers behind Rush's debut album Jennifer Rush, released in West Germany in October 1984. Rush herself co-wrote eight of the ten songs on the album, and other songwriters included Mary Susan Applegate, Patrick Henderson, Richard Feldmann, Marcy Levy and Eric Klapperton.

The most famous song from the album was "The Power of Love". Initially this song was released as the fifth and final single from the album in January 1985 in West Germany, where it initially peaked at number 16 on the German Singles Chart. "The Power of Love" found greater success in the United Kingdom, where the song was released in June 1985. The song was a "sleeper hit", spending 16 weeks on the UK Singles Chart before finally topping the chart in October. It spent five consecutive weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart and ultimately became Britain's best-selling song of 1985. It was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records at the time as the best-selling single by a female solo artist in the history of the British music industry. "The Power of Love" held that status until 1992, when it was outsold by Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".

Following the song's success in the United Kingdom, "The Power of Love" was released as single throughout the rest of the world in 1985 and 1986. It reached number one on the charts in Australia, Austria, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal and South Africa, as well as in Spain with a Spanish re-recording titled "Si Tu Eres Mi Hombre Y Yo Tu Mujer". The single additionally reached the top 10 of the charts in Belgium, Finland, Greece, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. The single was however less successful in the United States, where it peaked at number 57 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.

EMI and Virgin (1992–1999)

Through the 1990s, Rush released four albums, three with EMI. Between her leaving CBS and signing with EMI, Rush studied micro and macroeconomics at Harvard University in Boston. At that time she was considering a different career path.

In 1992 Jennifer released her first album with EMI Records, in joint distribution with Electrola, which was self-titled. Songwriters on the album included Rick Nowels, Ellen Shipley, Desmond Child, Denise Rich and Alan Barton, as well as Jennifer herself who co-wrote two songs. Four of the songs were re-recorded in Spanish for the Spanish edition of the album released in 1993. The album only charted in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, reaching top-40 positions in all three countries and was her lowest charting album in Germany at the time, being her first to miss the Top 30. All three singles from the album did however chart in the Top 100 of the singles chart. Jennifer also received a nomination for National Female Rock/Pop Artist at the 1993 Echo Music Prize awards.

Jennifer's second EMI/Electrola album Out of My Hands was released in February 1995. Like her previous album, it only charted in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but was able to achieve higher chart positions than her 1992 album. Out of My Hands reached the Top-30 in all countries and peaked at number 15 in Germany, becoming her first Top-20 album in the country since Wings of Desire. The album included the single "Tears in the Rain", a cover of the Robin Beck song, which charted in Germany and Switzerland, and was her highest charting single in both countries in the 1990s decade. The album also included covers of "Who Wants to Live Forever" by Queen and "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues. Songwriters on the album included Diane Warren, Desmond Child, Michael Bolton, Taylor Rhodes, who all worked with Jennifer on earlier albums, as well as Jon Secada, David Austin, Russ DeSalvo and Robert White Johnson who all worked with Jennifer for the first time on this album.

Jennifer's eighth studio album Credo was released in March 1997. The following year she released Classics, a collection of re-recordings of songs originally released in the 1980s with four newly written songs co-written by Rush.

2000 to present

A box set, Stronghold – The Collector's Hit Box, was released in August 2007. This compilation included all of Rush's singles from 1982 to 1991 (with the first record company that signed her), and in their extended versions as available. It also included all the B-sides and other rare or unreleased tracks (among them four James Bond theme songs, recorded live in 1984 and only released in a very limited edition by the Berlin Philharmonic).

In March 2009, she announced on her official website that she had signed a recording contract with Sony Music/Ariola for one album. That album would be Now Is the Hour, released in 2010. This marked a return to the recording label where she had made her international breakthrough in the 1980s and on which she had released the first five studio albums of her career. Now Is the Hour was released on March 5, 2010, in most of Europe, with minimal input from the label and on March 8, 2010, in the UK. The album failed to chart in the US or the UK, but reached number 21 on the German Albums charts.

Discography

Studio albums

Heidi (1979) (as Heidi Stern)

Jennifer Rush (1984)

Jennifer Rush: International Version (1985)

Movin' (1985)

Heart over Mind (1987)

Passion (1988)

Wings of Desire (1989)

Jennifer Rush (1992)

Out of My Hands (1995)

Credo (1997)

Classics (1998)

Now Is the Hour (2010)