Shawn Colvin

Shawn Colvin emerged as a prominent figure in the late-1980s new folk movement. Although she began within the confines of the woman-with-a-guitar tradition, she refreshed the style through varied musical choices and steered clear of predictable themes and rigid structures, favoring instead a more intimate and pop-tinged sensibility. Her first album captured the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1991, yet it was the 1997 single “Sunny Came Home” that propelled her firmly into widespread popularity. While she never again reached that same commercial summit, Colvin retained a large and devoted audience through the following decades.

Born in Vermillion, South Dakota, on January 10, 1956, Colvin developed an early love for music and learned guitar on her own by age ten. After two relocations—to London, Ontario, and then Carbondale, Illinois—she assembled the Shawn Colvin Band, a hard-rock group whose intense performances eventually damaged her voice. She next settled in Austin, Texas, joined the Western swing ensemble the Dixie Diesels, and remained with the group until vocal nodes prompted a brief retirement at twenty-four. In 1983 she headed to New York, where she became part of the local singer-songwriter community and cultivated a regional following.

Throughout the eighties Colvin climbed the folk-club ladder while also taking stage roles in off-Broadway productions that included Pump Boys and Dinettes, Diamond Studs, and Lie of the Mind. Her songs appeared in Fast Folk magazine, and her first notable exposure arrived in 1987 when she supplied backing vocals on Suzanne Vega’s hit “Luka.” The next year she began a songwriting partnership with John Leventhal, who supplied melodies for her lyrics. A live cassette sold at her concerts (Live ’88) drew the notice of Columbia Records, which signed her amid the breakthrough success of kindred artists such as Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, and the Indigo Girls.

Issued in 1989, Steady On earned the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording. Colvin’s 1992 follow-up, the pop-leaning Fat City, brought two additional nominations—Best Contemporary Folk Recording and Best Female Pop Vocal—for the single “I Don’t Know Why,” along with widespread critical acclaim and a broadening mainstream listenership; the track itself became a major adult-contemporary success. Cover Girl, a 1994 collection of interpretations, received uneven notices and modest sales yet still secured another Best Contemporary Folk Recording nomination.

Colvin unveiled A Few Small Repairs in late 1996, having composed the songs amid a difficult divorce. The album gradually gained traction during 1997, boosted by the pop-chart performance of “Sunny Came Home.” In 1998 that single claimed Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, while A Few Small Repairs became her first platinum-certified release. Holiday Songs and Lullabies appeared that same autumn.

Entering the new millennium, Colvin lent her voice to recordings by Béla Fleck, Edwin McCain, James Taylor, and Shawn Mullins. She also joined Sting for “One Day She’ll Love Me,” the theme for Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove. Returning to solo work, she issued Whole New You in 2001 and, in 2004, surveyed her first fifteen years with the anthology Polaroids: A Greatest Hits Collection, accompanied by a home-video counterpart. Two years later she delivered These Four Walls, her debut for Nonesuch, which included guest appearances by Patty Griffin and Teddy Thompson. While touring in support of the album, Colvin captured performances from a three-night stand at Yoshi’s in San Francisco and released the resulting material in 2009 as the live set Live.

Her eighth studio album, All Fall Down, arrived in 2012; produced by Buddy Miller and tracked at his Nashville home studio, it featured contributions from Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Jakob Dylan, and others. In 2015 Colvin followed her 1994 covers project with Uncovered, interpreting songs by Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Tom Waits, Stevie Wonder, Robbie Robertson, and Graham Nash. She next teamed with Steve Earle for the 2016 album Colvin & Earle, which paired jointly written originals with selected covers. In 2017 she marked the twentieth anniversary of A Few Small Repairs with a deluxe reissue and a brief tour. Early in 2018 she released The Starlighter, an album drawn from the children’s book Lullabies and Night Songs.