Grace Jones

Grace Jones stood out among the most distinctive talents to surface from New York City’s extravagant Studio 54 disco milieu in the final years of the 1970s. Born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, she was brought up in a rigorously religious Pentecostal home. Her parents eventually relocated to the United States, leaving Jones and her siblings with their grandmother and an abusive step-grandfather. At thirteen the children rejoined their family in America. She studied theater at Syracuse University before entering modeling, an early milestone captured on the 1973 Philadelphia International reissue of Billy Paul’s second album. Her imposing stature and theatrical style first captivated audiences in Paris and then New York, which in turn secured a recording agreement with Island Records. Although the Tom Moulton–produced disco albums Portfolio (1977), Fame (1978), and Muse (1979) did not reach broad audiences, Jones collected several Billboard club successes and cultivated a devoted following through her sexually provocative stage performances, earning her the designation “Queen of the Gay Discos.”

Early in the 1980s she abandoned conventional R&B-centered disco for a post-disco amalgam of reggae and rock shaped by Sly & Robbie and their studio collaborators, the Compass Point All-Stars. The calculated pivot produced three of her most acclaimed works—Warm Leatherette (1980), Nightclubbing (1981), and Living My Life (1982)—all tracked at Compass Point Studios in Nassau. These records featured her most compelling original songs, among them the provocative “Pull Up to the Bumper” and the resolute “Living My Life,” together with inventive renditions of material first recorded by the Pretenders, Roxy Music, and Iggy Pop. At the same time she cultivated a singular vocal manner that seemed simultaneously detached and imperious, matched by a glowering, predatory, nearly superhuman stage demeanor.

Jones subsequently stepped away from recording to concentrate on acting and appeared in Conan the Destroyer and the James Bond feature A View to a Kill. She later resumed her musical career by enlisting Trevor Horn—known for his work with Yes and Frankie Goes to Hollywood—to helm the expansive Slave to the Rhythm (1985), a project that carried autobiographical overtones. Island Life, a ten-track anthology drawn from her first six albums, appeared the same year. Her habit of partnering with major figures continued on Inside Story (1986). Produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers, the album yielded one of her final substantial singles, “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You).”

After Bulletproof Heart (1989) Jones recorded only sporadically and turned chiefly to acting, including a role in Eddie Murphy’s successful 1992 comedy Boomerang. Although compilations such as the double-disc Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions (1998) surfaced, nearly twenty years elapsed before she released another new album. She made a complete return to music in the late 2000s with Hurricane (2008), which included contributions from Brian Eno, Wendy & Lisa, Tricky, and others. During the 2010s her studio recordings from 1977 to 1981 were expanded and reissued, and she published the autobiography I’ll Never Write My Memoirs.