Elaine Paige

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Elaine Paige OBE (born Elaine Jill Bickerstaff, 5 March 1948) is an English singer and actress best known for her work in musical theatre. Raised in Barnet, North London, Paige attended the Aida Foster stage school, making her first professional appearance on stage in 1964, at the age of 16. Her appearance in the 1968 production of Hair marked her West End debut.

Following a number of roles over the next decade, Paige was selected to play Eva Perón in the first production of Evita in 1978, which brought her to the attention of the broader public. For this role, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Performance of the Year in a musical. She went on to originate the role of Grizabella in Cats and had a Top 10 hit with "Memory", a song from the show. In 1985, Paige released "I Know Him So Well" with Barbara Dickson from the musical Chess, which remains the biggest-selling record by a female duo. She then appeared in the original stage production of Chess, followed by a starring role in Anything Goes which she also co-produced. Paige made her Broadway debut in Sunset Boulevard in 1996, playing the lead role of Norma Desmond, to critical acclaim. She appeared in The King and I from 2000 to 2001, and six years later she returned to the West End stage in The Drowsy Chaperone. She has also worked sporadically in television.

Elaine Paige (album)

Elaine Paige is the second solo album from Elaine Paige, released in 1981. The album charted at #56 in May 1982 and was re-issued on CD in 1995 by Warner Music. The recording was produced by Tim Rice and Andrew Powell. Paige had met Rice when she was cast as Eva Perón in the original stage production of his musical Evita in 1978. He also wrote lyrics for a number of the tracks on the album. Rice's former writing partner Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the arrangement of the track "The Second Time", for which Rice had set words to Francis Lai's theme to the film Bilitis.

The track "Secrets" was originally written for the Barbra Streisand album Guilty, but didn't make it on to the final record.

Soon after completing recording of the album, Paige stepped into the role of Grizabella in the musical Cats very soon before its opening night after Judi Dench, who was to have played the role, damaged her Achilles tendon during rehearsals.

Track listing