"Pat Appleton"
"Pat Appleton"
Born the daughter of a German mother and a Liberian father, Pat Appleton spent most of her childhood and all her school days in Liberia. When she came back to Germany to study politics, she soon discovered that she could be a far better representative for music than for political affairs. After vocal training and many performances as the lead or background singer in various bands, and after excursions into advertisement and film music, she joined the sound collective De-Phazz in 1998, where she supplies lyrics and lead vocals to this day.
She contributed the ground-breaking hit “The Mambo Craze” to De-Phazz’ second album “Godsdog” (1999), a song which lead to the band’s ongoing great international acclaim. De-Phazz soon after received two German Echo nominations, sold more than 100,000 copies of their third album “Death By Chocolate” (2001) and entered the Top Ten of the German billboard charts with the fourth album “Daily Lama” (2003). Pat Appleton has always played a key role in establishing De-Phazz as successful cross border agents between pop and jazz and, as the German TV channel 3Sat claims, must be considered “one of the most important new voices of contemporary German Jazz”. Or as leading German women’s magazine BRIGITTE puts it: “She sings like a goddess: purring, enticing, wonderful.“
Today, Pat Appleton tours the entire world with De-Phazz and attracts her admirers in European capitals like Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Lissabon and Sofia. Besides, she works as songwriter and guest singer for other bands such as Nighthawks, Naoki Kenji and Airmate. Other vocal gems are her contributions to the compilation “Mister Bond - A Jazzy Cocktail of Ice Cold Themes” (2006) where she re-interpreted the classics “View To A Kill” and “Golden Eye”. By then, Berliner Morgenpost labeled Pat Appleton as an“ exceptional case of the new German casualness”.
Currently Pat Appleton (who moved to Berlin two years ago) is working on her solo album “What’s Next” which will be released in August 2007 at Stereo Deluxe. The album includes collaborations with some of the most exciting producers of European electronic music like Gabin (Italy), De-Phazz (Germany), Flipside (Denmark), and Vienna DC (Austria). Executive Producer is Chris Zippel, a long-standing co-producer for the Pet Shop Boys, who has also contributed a track for Robbie William’s album „Rudebox“ .