Solo career
Following the end of Scandal, Smyth's friend Eddie Van Halen invited her to join his band Van Halen to replace departed lead singer David Lee Roth. Smyth, eight months pregnant at the time, declined the offer, saying "It was just not the right time for me." "I was a New Yorker, I didn't want to live in LA ... and those guys were drunk and fighting all the time". She 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 album Patty Smyth. Off of that effort, she secured a hit record via "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough," a duet with Don Henley of the Eagles. 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, former tennis professional 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 a cover of "Ode To Billie Joe" (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 Come On December, she crowdfunded a campaign to support the Headstrong Project; all the money raised on the pre-orders of her album were designated 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.
