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Pop vocalist Taylor Dayne first came to many music fans’ attention with her 1988 debut album on Arista, Tell It to My Heart. The title track rocketed to top ten status, and the album garnered her four New York Music Award nominations. Her follow-up songs “Prove Your Love” and “I’ll Always Love You” also received a fair amount of radio airplay, but Dayne’s second album, Can’t Fight Fate, brought her another smash hit with the single “With Every Beat of My Heart.” Edwin Miller summed up the singer’s powerful vocal style in Seventeen: “Personality she’s got.”
Born Lesley Wunderman on March 7, 1963, Dayne grew up in Long Island, New York. Her earliest ambition was to be a singer, and she was active in her elementary school choruses, often performing solos. She began listening to rock music when she was in junior high, and when she reached high school, Dayne sang with her boyfriend’s band. She confided to Miller: “The other boys [in the band] didn’t like me. They were intimidated because I sang better than they rocked.” The group entertained at school dances, and performed songs made famous by the Allman Brothers, Joni Mitchell, and Joe Walsh.
When Dayne went to Nassau Community College to study philosophy, she hooked up with a band called Felony, where she sang duets with a male vocalist. Felony played its own compositions, and Dayne told Miller that she “loved getting away from singing somebody else’s music … That was my introduction to original music, learning how to write and interpret.” Though Dayne has made her mark in the pop genre, she offered this advice for aspiring singers, as quoted by Miller: “Never study with somebody who says they can teach you how to sing pop correctly. What’s pop? Get to the fundamentals. Do the basics!”
After Felony broke up, Dayne had a stint with a pop group called the Next, and eventually decided to forsake philosophy, deciding that the only thing she could do in the field was teach. She started working harder on her music career, cutting a demo tape in Los Angeles and singing in New York City for record-company talent scouts, but with few results. Somewhere along the line she recorded two singles under the name Leslee; these also went nowhere. Dayne was performing in a Russian-American nightclub in Brighton Beach, New York, “belting bawdy Russian songs,” in the words of People magazine, when she came to the attention of Arista Records. Anxious to distance herself from her previous unsuccessful recordings, she was aided in her search for a new stage name by friend Dee Snider of the rock group Twisted Sister, who suggested she use a male-sounding one and helped her come up with Taylor. Dayne found the last name in a baby book, according to Miller.
Once Dayne was under contract with Arista, things moved quickly. Tell It to My Heart was recorded in six weeks. The title cut was described in People as a “catchy dance tune,” and “Prove Your Love” was in a similar vein. “I’ll Always Love You,” according to People, was “an R&B-flavored ballad that Dayne hopes … will establish her as the white soul singer she longs to be.” Aside from the hit “With Every Beat of My Heart,” Can’t Fight Fate also included the ballad “Love Will Lead You Back.”
Dayne took a break after a world tour in support of the album. In 1992 she returned with Soul Dancing, which soared up the charts with “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love,” a remake of a Barry White classic. The song topped the charts in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, and stayed on the charts for more than 20 weeks.
Dayne branched out into movies when she appeared in the 1992 film Love Affair, starring Warran Beatty and Annette Bening. She also played Mehitabel in a Mel Brooks production of “Archie and Mehitabel,” and recorded “Original Sin,” the theme song for the film The Shadow.
In 1986 Dayne released Greatest Hits and appeared in two more movies, Fools Paradise and Stag. She went back to the recording studio, cowriting and producing her next album, Naked Without You, and followed this with a live album in 2000. Also in 2000, she recorded the title song for the Robert DeNiro film Flawless.
In 2000 and 2001 Dayne appeared as a guest on the Showtime television series Rude Awakenings. In 2001 she moved to Broadway, playing Princess Amneris in the musical Aida for nine months. She continued to write and record music for soundtracks, including those of Circuit, Lizzy McGuire, and Win a Date With Ted Hamilton. Dayne has continued to compose new work and record tracks for television and film.
Taylor Dayne Ell It To My Heart
