Pat Benatar

Her mother, Mildred (née Knapp; 1928–2016), was a beautician, and her father, Andrew (Andrzej) Andrzejewski (1926–2009), was a sheet-metal worker.

Her father was of Polish descent and her mother was of German, English, and Irish ancestry.

Her family moved to North Hamilton Avenue in Lindenhurst, New York, a village in the Long Island town of Babylon.

She became interested in theater and began voice lessons at Daniel Street Elementary School, singing her first solo at the age of eight, a song called "It Must Be Spring".

Patricia Mae Giraldo ( Andrzejewski; formerly Benatar; born January 10, 1953) is an American rock singer and songwriter.

In the United States, she has had two multi-platinum albums, five platinum albums, and 15 Billboard top 40 singles, while in Canada she had eight straight platinum albums, and she has sold over 35 million albums worldwide.

She is also a four-time Grammy Award winner.

She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November 2022.

Pat Benatar was born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski on January 10, 1953, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City.

At Lindenhurst Senior High School (1967–1970), she participated in musical theatre, playing Queen Guinevere in the school production of Camelot, marching in the homecoming parade, singing at the annual Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, and performing a solo of "The Christmas Song" on a holiday recording of the Lindenhurst High School Choir in her senior year.

She trained as a coloratura with plans to attend the Juilliard School, but decided instead to pursue health education at Stony Brook University.

At 19, after one year at Stony Brook, she dropped out to marry her first husband, high school sweetheart Dennis Benatar, a U.S. Army draftee who trained at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, then served with the Army Security Agency at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, before being stationed at Fort Lee, Virginia, starting in 1973.

She worked as a bank teller near Richmond, Virginia.

Benatar quit her job to pursue a singing career after being inspired by a Liza Minnelli concert she saw in Richmond.

She had a gig at a Holiday Inn and got a job as a singing waitress at a nightclub named the Roaring Twenties.

At the Roaring Twenties, she met and formed a duo with pianist Phil Coxon, which soon expanded to a ten-person lounge band called Coxon's Army, a regular at Sam Miller's basement club.

The band gained in popularity and was the subject of a never-aired PBS special; its bassist Roger Capps was later the original bass player for the Pat Benatar Band.

The period also yielded Benatar's first single: "Day Gig" (1974), written and produced by Coxon and given a limited local release.

Her last significant gig in Richmond was a two-hour performance at Thomas Jefferson High School.

Dennis Benatar was discharged from the Army and the couple moved to New York in May 1975 so she could pursue a singing career.

She performed at an amateur night at the comedy club Catch a Rising Star in New York.

Her rendition of Judy Garland's "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody" earned her a callback by club owner Rick Newman, who then became her manager; she became a regular performer at Catch a Rising Star for the next three years.

In late 1975 she landed the part of Zephyr in Harry Chapin's futuristic rock musical, The Zinger, which ran for a month in 1976 at the Performing Arts Foundation's (PAF) Playhouse in Huntington Station, Long Island.

Halloween 1977 proved a pivotal night in her early, spandexed stage persona.

She entered a Halloween contest at the Cafe Figaro in Greenwich Village dressed as a character from the film Cat-Women of the Moon.

Her 1979 debut album, In the Heat of the Night, was her breakthrough in North America, especially in Canada where it reached No. 3 on the album chart.

Two singles from it were hits: "Heartbreaker" and "We Live for Love", the latter written by her lead guitarist and future husband, Neil Giraldo.

Her second album, 1980's Crimes of Passion, was her most successful work, peaking at No. 2 in North America and France, being certified 4× and 5× platinum in the US and Canada, respectively.

Its single "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" reached the top 10 in the US and Canada and is considered to be her best-known song.

Her third album, Precious Time (1981), was another success, topping the US Album Chart and becoming her first top 10 album in Australia.

Its single "Fire and Ice" charted highly in the US and Canada.

Her next release, Get Nervous (1982), sold less well than her previous two albums, but did include the North American hit "Shadows of the Night".

In 1983 her sound began to move towards more atmospheric pop.

The single "Love Is a Battlefield" (1983) was her biggest hit in most countries, reaching No. 1 in the Netherlands, Australia and on the US Rock Tracks chart, and No. 5 on the US Hot 100.

The live album it came from, Live from Earth, was her biggest seller in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands.

In 1984, she released Tropico and its lead single "We Belong", which reached the top 10 in several countries, including No. 5 on the US Hot 100.

Her 1985 album, Seven the Hard Way, sold less well, but it yielded two singles harking back to the rock vein: "Invincible", a top 10 hit in North America, and "Sex as a Weapon".

Her follow-up, Wide Awake in Dreamland (1988), marked a resurgence in sales in Canada and Australia, and was her biggest hit in the UK.

Its rocker, "All Fired Up", was a significant hit in Canada, Australia and the US.

She released four additional albums between 1991 and 2003.