Marilyn Martin

Marilyn Martin established her reputation as an '80s pop/rock singer through the 1985 duet "Separate Lives," recorded with Phil Collins. The track climbed to the top of the pop charts and appeared on the soundtrack of the motion picture White Nights. After signing with Atlantic for her own projects while that single dominated airplay, she seemed positioned for major solo success, especially given her earlier tours supporting Stevie Nicks and Joe Walsh as a backing singer and the endorsement of label president Doug Morris. Yet her individual releases never matched those expectations commercially, leading some observers to label her among the decade's one-hit acts, even though the atmospheric 1986 track "Night Moves" also performed strongly enough to disqualify that description.

Born in Tennessee in 1954 and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, she spent her late teens in Ohio before relocating to Los Angeles alongside her husband, guitarist Greg Droman. There she secured steady session work, contributing harmonies to recordings by Tom Petty and Kenny Loggins in addition to Nicks and Walsh during the early and middle years of the decade. In 1984, while providing background vocals at the sessions for Nicks' Rock a Little, she attracted the attention of Doug Morris, who requested a demo of her original songs and ultimately offered a two-album deal. Atlantic issued "Separate Lives" in fall 1985 and followed it in January 1986 with her self-titled debut LP, which featured "Night Moves."

The label put out her sophomore effort, This Is Serious, in 1988; that collection contained "Possessive Love," a composition co-written by Madonna. Poor sales prompted Atlantic to drop her, and she never secured another recording contract or completed a third album, though she continued supplying backing vocals for assorted artists throughout the 1990s.