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Evelyn Thomas

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Evelyn Thomas
[[Image: CD album re-issue of Standing at the Crossroads \|220px\|]]
Background information
Birth name	Evelyn Thomas
Born	August 22 1953(1953-08-22)
Origin	Chicago, Illinois
Genre(s)	Hi-NRG, Dance, Disco, House Music
Occupation(s)	Singer
Instrument(s)	vocals
Years active	1976-2004
Label(s)	20th Century, Casablanca Records, Record Shack, TSR

Evelyn Thomas (born August 22 1953) is a singer from Chicago, Illinois, best known for the dance hit "High Energy".

1 Music career
2 Capturing the zeitgeist and a legend begins
3 The Energy reverberates
4 Discography
- 4.1 Albums
- 4.2 Singles
5 See also
6 External links

Music career

Although best known worldwide for her '80s Hi-NRG club hits, Thomas recorded and performed in disco, jazz, and gospel music styles for a decade before her successful stint in the 1980s. Discovered by British producer Ian Levine, who was in the U.S. in 1975 scouting for gospel and soul singers he could promote in the UK, the two recorded several tracks which resulted in a contract with 20th Century Records. Evelyn Thomas scored a chart hit with her first single, reaching the UK Top 30 in 1976 with the single "Weak Spot". A follow-up single, "Doomsday", entered the UK charts twice but each time floundered in the lower reaches, and sticky contract issues complicated her newfound success, though Levine and Thomas would continue their association for quite some time. Several unsuccessful singles followed before she hit the charts again, but when she did it would be unforgettable.

Capturing the zeitgeist and a legend begins

Her most successful recording, "High Energy" hit #1 on the U.S. Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1984. The song was also her only Billboard Hot 100 entry, peaking at #85, although she has had three additional songs hit the Billboard dance chart. "High Energy" was a major mainstream chart hit all over Europe, most notably reaching #5 on the UK Singles Charts charts and #1 in Germany. Although disco music had been declared "dead" in the U.S. in a backlash in 1979, several songs which continued and advanced the exuberant surge of uptempo dance music managed to scale the U.S. pop charts in the intervening years, notably Blondie's "Call Me" in 1980, Laura Branigan's "Gloria" in 1982, and Irene Cara's "Flashdance (What A Feeling)" in 1983. Unwilling to use the term "disco", the phrase "high energy" had come into usage, probably begun in England in the early 1980s. In fact, "High Energy" was used by a late incarnation of the Supremes as the title to a disco song and album in 1976. By 1984, the phrase had become embraced as a term by DJs across Europe and in the States, particularly in gay clubs where DJs who preferred to play records that surpassed a certain BPM (Beats Per Minute) threshold found many mainstream hits lagging in tempo. Evolving around that time to the abbreviated "Hi-Energy," the term soon became further shortened to "Hi-NRG", and was still widely in use more than two decades later to describe a certain genre of uptempo dance music. Though it became a widely held myth that the Evelyn Thomas song was the etymological source of the phrase, Thomas' hit certainly captured the dance music zeitgeist, and through that classic club hit she became an ambassador for that wave of dance music at the time of its greatest international prominence.

The Energy reverberates

The follow-up single "Masquerade", released the same year, received heavy rotation in European clubs but failed to cross over to the UK Top 40. In the U.S. the song was a top-twenty Dance hit. The following year, "Heartless" became her only single other than "High Energy" to chart outside of the Club/Dance charts in the United States. "Heartless" peaked at #84 on the Black Singles chart (later renamed the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart) in 1985. Though she would not return to the U.S. pop or R&B charts, U.S. dancefloors continued to move to the fast beat of Evelyn Thomas. With a cover of the Supremes' 1967 hit "Reflections", updated in her Hi-NRG style, Thomas peaked at #18 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1986, the same year in which Kim Wilde had a similarly styled hit with the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On". A second Thomas release that summer fared even better on those charts, as "How Many Hearts" narrowly missed the top 10. The two songs would later appear on Thomas' fourth album release, Standing at the Crossroads, in 1987. In late 1987, the single "No Win Situation" shot to #1 on the now defunct UK Hi-NRG chart. In spring 1997, Redemption featuring Evelyn Thomas had a minor U.S. club hit with the track "Tell The World". A new remix of her largest hit was released in 2004 as "High Energy 2004" and became a worldwide gay club hit. The remix was released on Dance Street/ZYX Records out of Germany in early 2005. The remix secured moderate radio and club play Stateside. This song was then ripped off by Daz Sampson in 2005 who tried to get it released in the UK before the Germans could release their remix.