Once she was one of the most recognised pop stars in the world, releasing hit records, duetting with music legends and living the high life in California.
Now, at the age of 66, Sheena Easton — the Bellshill girl made good — celebrates the fact that her years of fame are behind her and she can lead a more “normal” life, mostly unrecognised by fans.
In an interview with the New York Times, Easton said how she stepped back from the pop merry-go-round to start a family and now has a new and unexpected hobby — playing video games.
Easton in 1983 and, below, on stage in Florida in May
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“I’m a hardcore gamer”, Easton said, citing World of Warcraft and Ghost of Tsushima as her favourites. “I’ve got to put in like an hour or two into my gaming every day.”
Easton, whose 1980s hits included Morning Train (9 to 5) and Modern Girl, gave the interview to mark the launch of two new box sets of her recordings under the Cherry Red Records label.
She hasn’t released a new album for a quarter of a century and has scaled back her live appearances, but she is keen to be remembered as an artist who switched styles — from country singer to sexy soul diva — while taking the stage with some of the biggest names in the music world at the time.
At Glasgow airport, March 1980
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Born Sheena Shirley Orr into a music-mad Lanarkshire family, Easton gained a scholarship to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 1975. She married at the age of 19, gaining her last name, although the union ended after only eight months. She has been married and divorced four times.
Her break came when she applied to be in a BBC documentary series about aspiring artists called The Big Time, which led to a record deal with EMI.
Within a year she was a star on both sides of the Atlantic and so high profile she was asked to record a Bond theme for the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only.
WIth Roger Moore, who starred in For Your Eyes Only
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She became one of the most successful British female recording artists of the 1980s. She would become the first artist to notch top 5 records across five major Billboard charts and achieved combined record sales of more than 20 million worldwide.
As well as collaborations with artists such as Kenny Rogers and Prince, she gained Grammy awards for her vocal abilities and flirted with an acting career.
With Prince in the 1987 U Got The Look video
At the 27th Grammy awards show in 1985
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Her fame in the US did not go down particularly well in her native country. At The Big Day festival in Glasgow in 1990, her new American accent was booed by the crowd, she had bottles thrown at her and she was forced to cut her set short. She vowed never to perform in Scotland again.
By that time her pop stardom was wearing thin anyway and she decided to step back from the “craziness”. Although proud of her work, “there came a point where I thought, I need to change my life”, she said.
“At the risk of a horrible cliché, that’s when I got off the merry-go-round. I didn’t want to be in my 50s and 60s looking back, thinking all I ever did was make records, get on a tour bus, do a bunch of TV — rinse and repeat. I wanted something more.”
That something was adopting two children, a son, Jake, in 1994 and a daughter, Skylar, two years later. She left her long-time home in Los Angeles and relocated to Las Vegas, where she took on a casino residency at the Hilton.
“I did eight shows a week for two and a half years straight,” she said, “and it worked out great because the kids would go to bed and that’s when I would go to work.”
Easton’s last album, Fabulous, was released in 2000 and since there has been voice-over work in animation, a production of 42nd Street on London’s West End and occasional small-scale concerts but no return to recording.
Easton with the cast of 42nd Street at the Theatre Royal in 2016
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“I’m not being shoved in people’s faces any more, which means I can lead a very normal life 99 per cent of the time,” she said.
“I’m open to different creative things,” she added. “What I’m not open to is the craziness, the almost compulsory nature of what you have to do be a pop star. I did that once. I don’t need to do it again.”