About Vanity
Hometown
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Born
January 4, 1959
Genre
R&B/Soul
Aspiring actress and model Denise Matthews (b. 4 January 1959, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, d. 15 February 2016, Fremont, California, USA) broke into the music business when she gave a set of lyrics to the manager of Prince, who immediately offered her a role in his stable of artists. Prince renamed her Vanity and built a group around her called Vanity 6, whose sexually explicit stage act formed part of his touring revue. Eager to forge a solo career, Vanity turned down a part in the Purple Rain movie and signed to Motown Records, who promoted her as ‘Miss Audio-Visual 1984’ to capitalize on her physical appearance. Her debut Wild Animal successfully mixed rock and funk styles, and produced two hits, ‘Pretty Mess’ and ‘Mechanical Emotion’. On the 1986 follow-up, Skin On Skin, more prominence was given to her vocal abilities, as evidenced on the hit single ‘Under The Influence’. When she became a born-again Christian in the 1990s, Vanity gave up secular music for good. After years of battling kidney failure, she died in Fremont, California on 15 February 2016 at the age of 57.
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