Dina Carroll

Carroll was born in Newmarket, England, to a Scottish-Irish mother and an African-American father. She started singing aged five, and despite the lack of formal vocal coaching, she won a local talent competition London-based record label StreetSounds, Carroll moved to West London and recorded two singles for the company's StreetWave dance music singles label called "Set It Off" and "One Nation". Released in 1985, both records were credited to a non-existent group called Masquerade, with "One Nation" being a track based around a number of Parliament-Funkadelic songs such as "One Nation Under a Groove" and "Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)". After six unproductive months, she left StreetSounds/StreetWave, with Khan going on to use the Masquerade name again for the number 64 hit "(Solution to) The Problem" and a megamix called the "Streetsounds Real Thing Mix". In 1989, Carroll secured a recording contract with Jive Records/Zomba and released a number of singles in 1989 and 1990. but unlike the former's "Such a Good Feeling" and the latter's "Bass (How Low Can You Go)", both tracks failed to reach the top 40. After a short time at Jive Records, Carroll was spotted by Oliver Smallman, one half of First Avenue Management, a small and newly founded management group. First Avenue were already managing a dance production duo called Quartz, made up of Ronnie Herel and Dave Rawlings, and so Carroll was brought in to provide vocals for the duo on their cover of Carole King's "It's Too Late". so a follow-up collaboration was also recorded. This follow-up single was called "Naked Love (Just Say You Want Me)" and reached number 39 in the UK Singles Chart, becoming the last hit single for Quartz. After these two singles with Quartz, First Avenue decided to relaunch Carroll as a solo artist, and was signed to A&M Records by managing director Howard Berman. Carroll's first solo single, produced and co-written by Nigel Lowis, "Ain't No Man", was released in June 1992, reaching number 16 in the chart. ==Success==

To capitalise on the momentum of "Ain't No Man", Carroll and Lowis worked on future singles together, one of which being the top 20 hit "So Close", which was released in December 1992. Carroll was approached by Robert Clivillés and David Cole of C&C Music Factory, who invited her to New York to become the first British artist to work with them. Carroll interrupted the writing and recording of her album to record "Special Kind of Love", which also reached number 16 in the UK Singles Chart. The album continued to generate a string of hits, such as "This Time" (No. 23) and "Express" (No. 12). It debuted at No. 2 on the album charts, equalling the position of her debut So Close. "Only Human" was released as a double A-sided (with "Run to You") Christmas single for 1996, but was Carroll's least successful single since "Naked Love", reaching No. 33. Subsequently, no more singles were released from the album, although the popular "Living for the Weekend", co-produced by David Morales, was released on 12" and became a big club smash. During the recording of Only Human, Carroll discovered that she had developed otosclerosis, a hereditary bone disease that affected her ears. She postponed treatment until after all her recording duties had been fulfilled. She had an operation to replace a whole eardrum, but went back to work almost immediately to promote the album. Although any dislodgement by noise could have cost her the sense of hearing, Carroll made a reasonable recovery, despite some inevitable permanent loss. Overall, Carroll considered the making of the second album a very dispiriting experience, and often described Only Human as a "lost baby", despite it selling 500,000 copies and achieving Platinum status. Carroll was nominated for "Best British Female Artist" in the 1997 BRIT Awards. She then went into artistic hibernation, and although there were press reviews of tracks such as "Livin' for the Weekend" (reviewed in Billboard Magazine as a promo US single), the decision was made to concentrate on the making of the third album rather than release more singles from the second as Mercury were happy with the sales figures off the back of just two singles. She returned to the drawing board in 1998 for her third album. For this, she went to Los Angeles to work with producer Rhett Lawrence, most famous for his production of Mariah Carey's début album. The collaboration was originally intended for only three tracks, but they ended up recording a full album in Rhett's home studio. The lead single was "One, Two, Three", a radio-friendly mid-tempo love song. This was released in October 1998, with new remixes of "Livin' for the Weekend" to satisfy both her pop and dance music fans. It was her third single to reach No. 16 in the charts. The new album, Dina Carroll, was originally planned for release at the end of 1998, including her cover of the Dusty Springfield song "Son of a Preacher Man". "Son of a Preacher Man" was originally planned as the follow-up single to "One, Two Three". However, due to the untimely death of Dusty Springfield in early 1999, this single was withheld. At the same time, the album was postponed, because Carroll was not totally happy with some of the mixes on the album. Instead, Carroll's record company decided to relaunch her as a dance diva. A new up-tempo track, "Without Love", was chosen to be the next single, with a host of remixes to suit all sections of the club scene. The single continued her uninterrupted string of Dance Chart-toppers, and re-established her place in the UK music scene when released in July 1999, reaching No. 13 in the UK Singles Chart. A follow-up single, "Say You Love Me", was scheduled for release in November 1999. Part of the promotion saw Carroll performing the track live on Dale Winton's Saturday night Lottery Show. The remixed version of the album was planned to follow this single two weeks later. However, Mercury suspended the release of the single, and both the single and the album were shelved. However, Carroll appeared on the charity single "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" along with many other stars such as the Spice Girls. It reached No. 19 in the Christmas charts of 1999. ==Later career==

In 2000, First Avenue Management entered into a crisis phase when most of their artists were dropped by their labels, including Eternal, Louise, Dana Dawson, Kele Le Roc, Honeyz, Kéllé Bryan and Michelle Gayle. All of their acts had declining record sales, and Carroll was also caught up in this so left First Avenue at the end of 2000. In 2001, Carroll released a new single and a greatest hits compilation, The Very Best of Dina Carroll. Carroll's cover version of Van Morrison's "Someone Like You", featured in the ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' soundtrack, reached number 38. In 2003, Carroll recorded a version of the Randy Crawford song "Almaz". In 2016, Carroll appeared as a guest vocalist on "We Bring the Party" by the Dig Band, produced by long time collaborator Nigel Lowis. Carroll made her live comeback in 2016 as the headline act on the "David Gest Is Not Dead but Alive With Soul" tour. ==Awards and nominations==

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" ==Discography==