Julee Cruise

Infobox Musical artist
Name = Julee Cruise
Background = solo_singer

---

Img_capt = Julee Cruise performing live, 2008
Background = solo_singer
Alias =
Birth_name =
Born = birth date and age|1956|12|1 flagicon|USA Creston, Iowa, United States
Origin =
Genre = Dream pop
Occupation = Singer, songwriter, actress
Years_active = 1985 – present
Instrument = Vocals
Label = Warner Bros. Records WEA International Inc. Avex Asia Ltd. Distinct'ive Records Playhouse Records
URL = [http://www.myspace.com/juleecruise Official Myspace]

Julee Cruise (born 1 December 1956, in Creston, Iowa) is an American singer, and actress.

With a distinctive, airy voice, Cruise has recorded three albums, but is probably best known for the lead vocal on "Falling," the theme song for the cult U.S. television series "Twin Peaks". Until recently, she was a frequent collaborator with composer Angelo Badalamenti and film director David Lynch, who produced and wrote the lyrics for most of her songs.

Biography

Early life and career

Cruise studied French horn at Drake University and performed as a singer and actress in Minneapolis (notably in the role of Jinjur in stage adaptations of L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books) and New York, where she also worked as a talent scout for Badalamenti.

Collaborations with Badalamenti and Lynch

In 1985, Badalamenti was composing the score for David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", as well as serving as the vocal coach for the film's star, Isabella Rossellini. A key scene in "Blue Velvet" was intended to feature This Mortal Coil's version of "Song of the Siren" by Tim Buckley, but when the rights to the song proved prohibitively expensive, it was suggested that Badalamenti compose a pop song in the same style, with lyrics written by Lynch. Because the song required a vocalist with a haunting, ethereal voice, Badalamenti recommended Julee Cruise, who had sung "like an angel" in a New York theater workshop that Badalamenti had produced. The result of their initial collaboration was "Mysteries of Love", which figures prominently in "Blue Velvet"'s closing scenes.

Positive reaction to "Mysteries of Love" led Badalamenti and Lynch to write and produce additional songs for Cruise, most of which were featured in her debut album, "Floating Into the Night". The album was released on 12 September 1989 by Warner Bros. Records, and charted on "Billboard" the following year. A moody, tightly structured collection of dream pop songs with lush, idiosyncratic orchestrations and intentionally retro lyrics, "Floating Into the Night" became a favorite of such musicians as Tim Booth, lead singer of the band James, and techno artist Moby, who would go on to collaborate with Cruise on the unreleased track "Drown Disco". It also provided musical material for two of Lynch's other projects. The first was "Industrial Symphony No. 1", a dark, intentionally obscure performance piece in which Cruise performed while "floating" from a harness dozens of feet above a stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The second, more significant project was the soundtrack to Lynch's "Twin Peaks", for which Badalamenti composed the original score. The song "Falling", which became the orchestral theme for the television series, caused a minor sensation, winning a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental, while the "Twin Peaks" soundtrack, featuring Cruise on the songs "Into the Night" and "The Nightingale" as well as on the vocal version of "Falling", eventually became the best-selling television soundtrack of all time. Cruise made a number of appearances on "Twin Peaks" as a girl singer at a local bar, and was prominently featured in both the show's landmark pilot episode and the episode where Laura Palmer's muderer is revealed, as well as in 1992's "".

The campy but unsettling "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", the second single from "Floating Into the Night", was released in 1990 and was also featured in an episode of "Twin Peaks". Cruise also made a controversial appearance on "Saturday Night Live" on May 12, 1990, when scheduled performer Sinéad O'Connor refused to appear on the same show as guest host Andrew Dice Clay. The following year, Cruise recorded a Lynch and Badalamenti produced cover of the Elvis Presley song "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" for the soundtrack of Wim Wenders's "Until the End of the World". Afterwards, Cruise maintained a relatively low profile until her second album, "The Voice of Love", was released in 1993. To many listeners and reviewers, this album suffered in comparison to its predecessor, possibly due to the numerous other projects competing for Lynch and Badalamenti's attention. Many of the tracks were little more than instrumentals from "Wild at Heart" or "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" with added vocals. However, several songs, notably "Questions in a World of Blue", are ranked by fans among Cruise's best.

Cruise's early collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch were closely related to Lynch's film work, and their lyrics often reflect this. For example, "Into the Night" begins with the whispered words "Now it's dark", a line which was repeatedly spoken by Frank Booth, Dennis Hopper's character, in "Blue Velvet". Lynch also photographed Cruise for the liner notes of "Floating Into the Night" and "The Voice of Love", and created the sculptures featured on the covers of both albums.

Recent work

The following decade found Cruise lending her vocals to works by a more miscellaneous list of collaborators, mostly in Electronic music. She provided vocals and lyrics to several of the songs on "Wide Angle", the debut album by Welsh electronic music group Hybrid, notably the epic techno track "If I Survive". She also appeared on two albums by dance artist Khan. The lyrics for many of these songs, such as "Body Dump", reflect Cruise's own interest in true crime. She appears on a number of tracks on both the 2003 album "Dreams Top Rock" and the 2007 album "Monstrous Surplus" by German post-rock act, Pluramon.

Cruise also acted and sang in the off Broadway cast of "Return to the Forbidden Planet", a spoof of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest", and toured with The B-52s as Cindy Wilson's replacement on and off from 1992 through 2000. She also performed regularly with Bobby McFerrin's improvisational vocal group Voicestra/CircleSong.

Cruise's long-delayed third album, "The Art of Being a Girl", was released in 2002. This was the first of her albums for which Badalamenti and Lynch did not produce or write any of the music, with music and lyrics for each of the songs being written by Cruise herself (with the exception of an updated version of her classic single "Falling") and guest produced by Rick Strom and Mocean Worker.

The following year, Cruise's song "The World Spins" was featured in an extended ballet sequence in Robert Altman's "The Company".

She was featured in a song by Supa Dj Dimitri (formerly of Deee-Lite) called "Space Oddity". She appeared as Andy Warhol (among other characters, includingSusan Sontag) in the 2004 Keith Harring bio-musical "Radiant Baby" at the Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival, directed by George Wolf.

In 2003, Depeche Mode songwriter Martin Gore included a cover version of Cruise's song "In My Other World" (from her 1993 album "The Voice of Love") on Counterfeit2, the second in his series of cover albums dedicated to his own musical influences and atmospheric inspirations.

More recently, Cruise has appeared as a guest vocalist on "Sarcast While", the 2006 full-length album from the New York band, Time of Orchids, released on Tzadik Records. Her vocals also appear on 5 tracks on Kenneth Bager's 2006 album Fragments From A Space Cadet.

Cruise's song "Floating" was featured in TV advertisements and trailers for the show The Riches debuting on FX Networks in March 2007.

Cruise provides the vocal's for Delerium's "Magic" song (on the "Chimera" album).

Cruise provided vocals alongside Pharrell in Handsome Boy Modeling School's song "Class System".

Cruise currently lives in Manhattan with her husband Edward Grinnan, the editor-in-chief of "Guideposts Magazine".

She is in pre-production for her upcoming album featuring New York musicians Jesse Krakow, Clifton Hyde, & Mike Pride which will be released in 2008.

Discography

Albums

* "Floating into the Night" (1989)
* "The Voice of Love" (1993)
* "The Art of Being a Girl" (2002)
* "(New Studio Album TBC)" (2008)

ingles

Collaborations

* Hybrid
* Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks Soundtrack)
* Moby
* The B52s
* Mocean Worker
* David Lynch
* B(if)tek
* Bobby McFerrin
* Kenneth Bager

External links

* [http://www.davidlynch.de/jcruise.html Julee Cruise discography and press kit (both somewhat dated)]
* [http://www.myspace.com/juleecruise Official Myspace]
*