Download Free Robert Palmer * Songs

Robert Palmer music biography continued...

Palmer didn't take up music seriously until he was in his early twenties when he played in such British rock bands as Dada, Vinegar Joe, and the Alan Bown Band. Palmer signed a solo contract with Island Records, a British company, in the mid-1970s. He then cut a string of albums that were critical successes but commercial failures. After 1983's Pride, Palmer teamed with the Duran Duran side project Power Station, scoring hits with the singles "Some Like It Hot" and "Get It On" (a T. Rex cover), which returned the singer to overt rock territory. He would finally break through as a solo act with 1986's Rip Tide, which included the hit singles, "Addicted to Love" and "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On. In 1987, he won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the latter. His next album, Heavy Nova, was another platinum success, and its best-known single, "Simply Irresistible," was one of the biggest hits of the summer of 1988. Having finally tapped into the American market, Palmer signed with EMI Records in 1988 and appeared in a popular Pepsi Cola commercial singing "Simply Irresistible" in 1989. In 1989, he won a second Grammy for "Simply Irresistible", which would later be featured in the Tony Award-winning musical Contact. Rolling Stone magazine voted Palmer the best-dressed rock star for 1990. This, coupled with the fact that he was always surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women in his music videos, Palmer earned a reputation as one of the sexiest male rock acts of the day.



The next few years saw more touring and more compilations; the next release of new material, Rhythm and Blues (1999), contained a mixture of rock and pop songs and yielded the single, "True Love," which was a minor hit in Britain. Palmer's final release, Drive (2003), was critically hailed as the grittiest and most heartfelt album of his career. Palmer continued to conduct small scale tours, mostly around the lucrative casino circuit. He died in Paris, France in 2003 of a sudden heart attack at the age of 54.