An Australian soul singer with a long line of gold-certified albums, Renée Geyer was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on September 11, 1953. Raised by a Jewish family, she attended high school in Sydney and joined the jazz-rock group Sun as a teenager. Sun released one album, Sun 1972, before she left the group and signed with RCA Records as a solo artist. Her self-titled debut album was released in 1973, followed in 1974 by her first Top 40 release, It's a Man's Man's World. 1975's Ready to Deal climbed to Number 21 in Australia, with the lead single "Heading in the Right Direction" climbing to Number 31 that same year. Although she moved to America for several years during the decade's latter half, her popularity remained strongest in Australia, where she earned her first Top 20 single with "Stares and Whispers" in 1977. Several years later, 1981's So Lucky spawned the highest-charting single of her career, "Say I Love You," which climbed to Number 5 in Australia and Number 1 in New Zealand. After scoring additional Top 40 hits with 1981's "Do You Know What I Mean" and 1985's "All My Love," she focused on her work as a session vocalist for several years, then released a self-titled album in 1988 with the short-lived band Easy Pieces. She resumed releasing solo albums with 1994's Difficult Woman and returned to the Top 20 with 2003's gold certified Tenderland. Acknowledged as Australia's most successful soul singer, she released albums like 2005's Tonight, 2007's Dedicated, and 2013's Swing, then kicked off the fifth decade of her career with the single "Heading In the Right Direction" in 2022. After having hip surgery in January 2023, it was discovered that she had inoperable lung cancer. Renée Geyer died on January 17, 2023, at the age of 69.
