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| Birth Name(s) : Patricia Mae Andrzejewski |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Singer |
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Full Pat Benatar Biography
Pat Benatar was born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski (AN-dree-esk-ee) in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York to a Polish/Irish family. She initially studied voice and opera, following in the footsteps of her mother while growing up in Lindenhurst, New York, on Long Island.
Pat immediately moved to Richmond, Virginia with her husband, where she worked as a bank clerk and sang gigs at night. She would later remark that her time at the bank was unpleasant, partly because of her obsession with keeping all the bills face up and turned in the same direction, causing her to be one of the slowest tellers. She and her husband moved to New York City in 1975, and the two divorced in 1979.
In August 1980, Benatar released her second LP, Crimes of Passion, featuring her signature song "Hit Me with Your Best Shot". The single was her first to break the US Top 10 and eventually sold more than 4 million copies in the USA. The album reached US #2 in January 1981 (behind Yoko Ono and John Lennon's Double Fantasy) and a month later, Benatar won her first Grammy Award for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1980. Other singles released from Crimes of Passion were "Treat Me Right" (US #18) and a cover of the Young Rascals' "You Better Run" (US #42, AUS #31), which gained some later notoriety when it was the second music video played on MTV, after the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star".. The album remained on the US album charts for 93 weeks.
Benatar's first (and as yet only) US chart-topper was the LP Precious Time, released in August 1981. It was also her first to chart in the UK, reaching #30. The album's lead single, "Fire and Ice", was another big hit (US #17, AUS #30) and would win Benatar her second Grammy Award, this time for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1981.
A hit single, "Shadows of the Night", (US #13, AUS #19) heralded a new LP, Get Nervous, released in late 1982. The album was another smash, reaching US #4, and the single would garner Benatar yet another Grammy, again for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1982. The follow-up single, "Little Too Late", was also successful, hitting US #20. The WWII-themed music video for "Shadows of the Night" featured then-unknown actors Judge Reinhold and Bill Paxton as an American fighter copilot and a German radio operator, respectively.
By 1983, Benatar had established a reputation for writing about 'tough' subject matter, with a significant amount of songs featuring a "battle" metaphor. This was best exemplified by one of the biggest hits of her career, "Love Is a Battlefield", released in December 1983. By now her sound had mellowed from hard rock to more atmospheric pop and the story-based video clip for "Love Is a Battlefield" was aimed squarely at MTV, even featuring Benatar in a Michael Jackson-inspired group dance number. This new pop direction was a huge commercial success, with the single peaking at #5 in the US, her first hit single in the UK at #49, and #1 in Australia for five weeks. The song would also net Benatar her fourth consecutive Grammy Award for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1983. A live album, Live from Earth, from which "Love Is a Battlefield" was one of two studio recorded tracks, hit US #13.
In late 1984, the single "We Belong" became another Top 5 smash in the US (also hitting UK #22 and AUS #7) but the LP Tropico became her first studio album since the 1979 debut to fail to crack the US Top 10, reaching only #14 (AUS #9). A second single release, "Ooh Ooh Song", continued this trend by struggling to US #36.
Benatar would hit the US Top 10 once more, with the single "Invincible" in 1985, but her days of assured commercial success in the US were over. "Sex As a Weapon" would only climb as high as #28 in January 1986 and the LP Seven the Hard Way barely dented the US Top 30, peaking at #26 and earning a gold album.
At the same time, her appeal in the UK began to grow, with a 1987 greatest hits LP, Best Shots, reaching #6 and gold sales status, and re-released singles "Love Is a Battlefield" and "Shadows of the Night" charting at #17 and #50, respectively. Her standing in Australia (always Benatar's most successful territory outside of the US), also remained undiminished, with Seven the Hard Way hitting the Top 10, and Best Shots and 1988's Wide Awake in Dreamland the Top 20. A single lifted from the latter, "All Fired Up" (written by Kerryn Tolhurst, ex-The Dingoes) went Top 20 in the USA and UK and was a #2 smash in Australia, becoming one of the biggest hits of 1988 in that country.
Since early 2000, Pat and her family have been living on the island of Maui in a small, isolated community, where they do organic farming. She still tours.
Though she had earlier expressed dismay for rock stars endorsing products (including onetime cohort Debbie Harry, who had developed her modeling career simultaneously to her rock career), Benatar herself has now become a commercial spokeswoman for the Energizer company, and is currently being featured in an ad for Candies Vintage shoes for Kohl's department store.
- 2007 New Song "Passion" can be downloaded free from Jellos Official site. |
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