Jane Siberry

Jane Siberry (Stewart; born 12 October 1955) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, known for such hits as "Mimi on the Beach", "I Muse Aloud", "One More Colour" and "Calling All Angels".

She performed the theme song to the television series Maniac Mansion.

Jane Stewart was born in Toronto in 1955 and was raised in the suburb of Etobicoke.

She would take her subsequent surname, "Siberry", from the family name of her maternal aunt and uncle.

Many years later, she would explain this choice by stating "this woman and her husband were the first couple I met where I could feel the love between them and I held that in front of me as a reference point."

Siberry learned piano from the age of four, predominantly teaching herself and developing her own concepts of notation and structure.

At school she learned conventional music theory (as well as French horn) and taught herself to play guitar by working through Leonard Cohen songs.

Her first song was completed at the age of seventeen, although she had been developing song ideas since much earlier.

Following high-school graduation from Richview Collegiate in Etobicoke, Ontario, and then the Canadian Junior College, Lausanne, Switzerland, Siberry moved on to study music at the University of Guelph, later switching to microbiology (in which she gained a BSc degree) when she found freshman music courses to be stifling.

She began performing in folk clubs in Guelph, linking up first with singer Wendy Davis and then with bass guitarist John Switzer in a group called Java Jive.

Following the split of Java Jive in 1979, Siberry maintained both a musical and a romantic relationship with John Switzer (who would work with her on her first four records).

On leaving university, she supported her work as a solo performer by working as a waitress, earning enough to finance and tour her debut album, the folk-influenced Jane Siberry, which was released in 1981 on Duke Street Records.

The album was relatively successful for an independent release, enabling Siberry to sign a three-album deal with A&M Records via the Windham Hill label.

As part of the deal, Siberry was able to release her albums on Duke Street Records in Canada while Windham Hill handled American release and distribution.

Assembling a backing band of Switzer, guitarist Ken Myhr, keyboard players Doug Wilde and Jon Goldsmith, and drummer Al Cross, Siberry recorded her second album No Borders Here (released in 1984) for which she mostly abandoned the folk approach in favour of electronic art-pop.

This coincided with a growth in support of new wave and independent music within Canadian broadcast media, including the Toronto radio station CFNY and the video channel MuchMusic.

Both of these became keen supporters of Siberry and put her onto high playlist rotation.

Siberry's first hit was the No Borders Here track "Mimi on the Beach" – a seven-and-a-half-minute art-rock single which benefited from the art-friendly broadcast support at the time (and from its video made by Siberry and friends).

Both factors earned it heavy MuchMusic and college radio play.

Two further singles with videos – "You Don't Need" and "I Muse Aloud" – consolidated the success.

No Borders Here sold 40,000 copies and won Siberry a CASBY award for best female vocalist, as well as giving her first opportunity to play live in New York.

Siberry's third album, The Speckless Sky (1985), continued her art-pop approach.

It was another commercial and critical success, going gold in Canada by selling over 100,000 units and establishing Siberry as a Canadian pop star.

The album provided another hit single, "One More Colour" (with a video featuring Siberry walking a cow) and won the 1985 CASBY for best album, with Siberry also picking up the award for best producer.

In 1986 Siberry signed with Warner Brothers subsidiary Reprise Records, which picked up her American contract from Windham Hill, while honouring the existing Canadian arrangement with Duke Street Records.

For her fourth album (her first for Reprise) Siberry created The Walking.

Released in 1988, it contained a set of intricately structured songs, many of which were lengthy and shifted between narrative viewpoints and characters.

Many of the songs dealt with romantic collapse and miscommunication, partially inspired by Siberry's breakup with John Switzer (which happened during the writing and recording of the album).

She was marketed as part of the "high art" end of rock music, alongside artists such as Kate Bush or Peter Gabriel.

Siberry embarked on a tour of Europe and the United States to promote The Walking.

This included her first European performance, which took place at the ICA in London.

In spite of the efforts of both label and artist, The Walking was ultimately less of a commercial success than The Speckless Sky, with Siberry failing to make her mainstream breakthrough.

Although the album met with the same critical interest and attention as its predecessor, reviews were noticeably harsher and less welcoming.

As well, the album was considered unsuitable by broadcasters for radio airplay, despite the presence of several shorter and more accessible tracks on the album (both the title track and a shorter edit of "Ingrid and the Footman" were released as singles but failed to make an impact).

Despite this setback, Reprise retained Siberry's contract, even taking over the Canadian side of the distribution for her next album, 1989's Bound by the Beauty.

Siberry moved towards more simple and direct song forms, jettisoning electronic art-pop in favour of more acoustic styles drawing on country and western and Latin music.

While retaining her quirkier conceptual approach, the album's song themes were generally more lighthearted than those of The Walking.

Prior to the album's release, Siberry toured various folk festivals (in a duo format with Ken Mhyr on guitar) to reposition herself in the market; Bound by the Beauty had better record sales, and appeared on the RPM Top 100 Albums chart in 1989.

On 30 August 2005, Siberry was awarded the 2005 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award in music by the Canada Council for the Arts.

She has released material under the name Issa – an identity (as opposed to a simple stagename) which she used formally between 2006 and 2009.