Ruby Turner

Ruby Turner, a singer and actress of British-Jamaican heritage whose voice spans multiple idioms, launched her independent recording career toward the close of the 1980s. That period yielded the chart-topping single “It’s Gonna Be Alright” along with a steady sequence of well-regarded albums and singles that moved through soul, gospel, and pop. She forged an enduring partnership with Jools Holland and shared stages with an illustrious roster that ranged from Mick Jagger to Steve Winwood. Parallel to her musical work, she took on parts in cinema, television, and theater, among them a staging of Fame and the popular romantic comedy Love Actually. The same breadth of activity extended into the twenty-first century, bringing her to the 2020 feature The Host, where she both performed and supplied the theme song.

Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in 1958—though certain references list 1962—she relocated with her family to Handsworth, Birmingham, England, at the age of nine. An early ambition to sing led, in the opening years of the 1980s, to collaborations with British blues figure Alexis Korner. UB40 recordings already featured her by 1983, yet wider attention arrived in 1986 through her contribution to Culture Club’s From Luxury to Heartache, an album that marked one of the band’s final efforts in its original lineup. Shortly afterward she secured her own contract. The resulting debut, Women Hold Up Half the Sky (1986), earned both critical praise and commercial traction, and over the next three decades she issued thirteen further albums. One of these, Paradise (1989), reached number 39 on the Billboard R&B chart. Eight singles charted for her across the 1980s and 1990s; the highest-placed was “I’d Rather Go Blind,” which attained number 27 in England in 1987.

Live and recorded work connected her with Bryan Ferry, Steve Winwood, Mick Jagger, and, most consistently, Jools Holland, whose Rhythm & Blues Orchestra albums have carried her voice since the ensemble’s formation in the early 1990s. Composers in her own right, she has seen her material interpreted by Lulu, Yazz, and Maxi Priest. She in turn delivered a notable version of the Staple Singers’ “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” alongside Jonathan Butler. “It’s Gonna Be Alright” itself topped the U.S. R&B listings. Acting credits accumulated in productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Carmen Jones, and Fame, as well as episodes of the BBC soap Doctors and the 2003 film Love Actually. In 2015 she and Holland issued the joint album Jools & Ruby, drawing on favored live repertoire and several jointly composed pieces. The following year she received an MBE for services to popular music. Her 2020 album Love Was Here appeared in tandem with her role in The Host, for which she also wrote and recorded the theme “Chasing Love.”