1967-11-01

SOPHIE B. HAWKINS, American musician, born; Hawkins began crafting demos in a friend’s home studio before being recruited as a percussionist for Bryan Ferry in the early 1980s. (She was subsequently fired by Ferry and later claimed that experience as being the catalyst she needed to commit to her songwriting. She wrote “Damn I Wish I was Your Lover” shortly after.) Her debut album, Tongues and Tails, was released in 1992. It achieved both critical acclaim, earning her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 1993, as well as worldwide commercial success.

The single “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles’ chart in the USA. Whaler, her second album, was released in 1994. It also contained a Top 10 hit, the song “As I Lay Me Down.” Many of Hawkins’s songs are openly about sex, such as “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” from Tongues and Tails, and “I Need Nothing Else,” from Whaler. “Beautiful Girl,” from Wilderness, and songs such as “32 Lines” and “Your Tongue Like the Sun in My Mouth” began to deal explicitly with her bisexuality (though Hawkins reportedly prefers the term “omnisexuality”). Her influences include jazz, rock and African music.