KATRINA & THE WAVES, 'LOVE SHINE A LIGHT' IN THE UK

Katrina and The Waves

Today, The Watsons are working with Rennette to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. They have created a new Facebook account for Rennette. She has also offered them a Cambridge Key English Test A2 Example to practice.

The Grandma has explained them the history of Katrina and the Waves, a pop British group that was very popular during the 80's and the 90's and winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1997 representing the United Kingdom.

Katrina and the Waves were a British-American rock band best known for the 1985 hit Walking on Sunshine. They also won the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Love Shine a Light.

The band's earliest incarnation was as The Waves, a group that played in and around Cambridge, England, from 1975 to 1977 and featured guitarist Kimberley Rew and drummer Alex Cooper. This incarnation of The Waves never issued any recordings, and broke up when Rew left to join the Soft Boys.

A more direct ancestor of Katrina and the Waves was the band Mama's Cookin', a pop cover band hailing from Feltwell, England. This band, founded in 1978, featured American Katrina Leskanich on vocals and keyboards, and her then-boyfriend and fellow American Vince de la Cruz on vocals and lead guitar.

More information: Katrina and The Waves

By late 1980, Alex Cooper had joined the band on drums, with Bob Jakins on bass. Mama's Cookin' proceeded to gig steadily in England over the next two years, specialising in covers of songs by American acts such as Heart, Foreigner, Linda Ronstadt, and ZZ Top.

When The Soft Boys broke up in 1981, Rew contacted his old Wave-mate Cooper to see about renewing their musical partnership. Cooper convinced Rew to join Mama's Cookin', and the five-piece group (Leskanich/Rew/Cooper/de la Cruz/Jakins) was quickly renamed The Waves after the band Rew and Cooper had been in together in the mid-1970s.

The Waves were initially fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist Rew, who brought a wealth of original material to the band. Leskanich, meanwhile, originally only sang lead vocals on the cover tunes in the band's repertoire. However, over the first year of The Waves' existence, Rew began to write material for Leskanich to sing, and she was soon the primary vocalist.

Katrina and The Waves won Eurovision in 1997

The Waves made their initial recorded appearances on a 1982 single Nightmare/Hey, War Pig!; both tracks were included on the 1982 Rew solo album called The Bible of Bop.

The Waves then issued their debut EP Shock Horror later in 1982. Around this time, bassist Jakins left the band, and de la Cruz took over on bass. Now a quartet, The Waves issued the single Brown Eyed Son in the UK in August 1982 before permanently renaming themselves Katrina and the Waves.

In early 1983, the fledgling band recorded -at their own expense- an LP of their original material designed to be sold at gigs. Rew wrote all the songs on this LP, and Leskanich sang eight of the album's 10 tracks.

The LP was shopped around to various labels, but only Attic Records in Canada responded with an offer. Consequently, although they were based in England, Katrina and The Waves' first album Walking On Sunshine was only released in Canada.

The album garnered enough critical attention and radio play, especially for the title track, to merit a Canadian tour. In 1984, the group released a follow-up album in Canada, Katrina and the Waves 2, with Leskanich now handling all the lead vocals. Rew was still the primary songwriter, but de la Cruz was also responsible for a few songs, including the Canadian airplay hit Mexico.

More information: Getty Images

Also in 1984, their song Going Down to Liverpool was covered by The Bangles, which added to their profile. With the group building a fan base with their recordings and extensive touring, major label interest began to build, and Katrina and the Waves eventually signed an international deal with Capitol Records in 1985.

For the first Capitol album, the band re-recorded, remixed, or overdubbed 10 songs from their earlier Canadian releases to create their self-titled international debut album in 1985.

The Katrina and the Waves album was a substantial critical and commercial success, and the group had a worldwide hit with the song Walking on Sunshine, no. 9 US, no. 8 UK, a completely re-recorded, and substantially rearranged version of the song when compared to its initial 1983 Canada-only release. A Grammy award nomination for Best New Artist followed, as did constant touring, both of which helped to spur moderate sales of new releases.

Katrina and The Waves won Eurovision in 1997

A follow-up single to Walking on Sunshine called Do You Want Crying, written by de la Cruz, also became a top 40 US hit, reaching no. 37 in the late summer of 1985.

However, the band's follow-up album to Katrina and the Waves, simply entitled Waves, did not meet with the same measure of success, either critically or commercially. Rew wrote only two of the 10 songs on the LP; de la Cruz and Leskanich each wrote four. Drummer Cooper, interviewed some years later, claimed It was (a) mistake when we started taking over from Kimberley in the musical contribution side. The second Capitol album was awful.

The album did spin off a minor UK and US hit in the form of the Rew-penned Is That It? no. 70 US, no. 82 UK, and Sun Street -a de la Cruz composition- was a UK top 30 hit in 1986. However, Capitol dropped the band after The Waves album.

The band subsequently recorded a 1989 album for Capitol-distributed SBK Records called Break of Hearts, a harder, more rock-oriented effort than their previous releases. The album included That's the Way which reached no. 16 in the US, credited to Leskanich/Rew, but subsequent singles, including Rock 'n' Roll Girl, failed to chart, and the band once again were dropped from their label.

More information: The Guardian

Throughout the 1990s, Katrina and the Waves recorded fairly steadily, though most releases were available only in continental Europe and/or Canada, and they issued no charting singles. They also recorded the song We Gotta Get Out of This Place with Eric Burdon for the TV series China Beach in 1990.

By the late 1990s, however, the band had all but disappeared -until they surprisingly, if briefly, surged back into the limelight by winning the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest for the United Kingdom on 3 May 1997 with the song Love Shine a Light. The song won by a then-record margin of 70 points over the Irish runner-up.

Love Shine a Light became Katrina and the Waves' biggest-ever UK hit, peaking at no. 3 in the UK Singles Chart.

Despite their return to the public eye in the UK, Katrina and the Waves were not able to follow up Love Shine a Light with another hit, and Leskanich left the group in 1998 after several disagreements within the band. Legal wrangling followed, preventing Leskanich from using the band name. Though attempts were made by The Waves to find a new Katrina to front the group, the three remaining group members eventually dissolved the band to pursue individual careers in 1999.

More information: RFT-River Front Times

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Love shine a light in every corner of my dream
Let the love light carry, let the love light carry
Like the mighty river flowing from the stream
Let our love shine a light in every comer of our dreams.

 Katrina and The Waves