Melissa Manchester

With her 20th album, You Gotta Love the Life, Melissa Manchester celebrates not only 40 years as a Grammy award-winning performer and songwriter, but also a renewed independence and vitality. “This album couldn’t have come a minute before it came,” she says.

The melodically diverse collection, which includes guest appearances from Stevie Wonder, Al Jarreau, Keb' Mo’, Dionne Warwick, Dave Koz, and Joe Sample (in one of his last recordings) is the gifted singer’s first new studio album since 2004’s, When I Look Down That Road.

Manchester’s career is remarkable not only for its longevity and accomplishments, but for its versatility. Following her stint as a founding member of Bette Midler’s Harlettes, Manchester’s tremendously successful solo career brought her critical and commercial acclaim. The “Midnight Blue” singer received her first Grammy nomination for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance in 1979 for the Peter Allen/Carole Bayer Sager-penned, “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” winning the Grammy in that category four years later for, “You Should Hear How She Talks About You.”

Manchester has also had her songs recorded by Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack, Dusty Springfield, Alison Krauss, Kenny Loggins and many others. Two songs she performed, “Through The Eyes Of Love” and “The Promise,” were nominated for Oscars in the same year. She has written tunes for several other films including The Great Mouse Detective, Lady and the Tramp II, Dirty Girl, and Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls.

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