Michael Sembello
Encyclopedia
Michael Sembello is an American musician and songwriter
from Philadelphia
, Pennsylvania
.
and began his career as a professional musician by becoming a session musician
, working increasingly with high-profile artists as a studio
guitarist
. The list of pop music
personalities he worked with, or wrote for, includes Stevie Wonder
(from 1974 to 1979), The Temptations
, Michael Jackson
, Diana Ross
, Chaka Khan
, George Benson
, Barbra Streisand
, Stanley Clarke
, David Sanborn
, Donna Summer
, Miguel Mateos
and New Edition
among many others.
He released his first solo album, Bossa Nova Hotel
in 1983, and the song "Maniac
" was selected for inclusion in the movie
Flashdance
. This song went on to become the third highest grossing song from a soundtrack
. His contribution to that soundtrack was rewarded with a Grammy Award
in 1983 for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special.
Sembello produced
guitarist Jennifer Batten
's first solo album, Above Below and Beyond
in 1992. In 1994, he produced Argentine
singer Valeria Lynch
's album Caravana de Sueños (1994), and co-wrote the title song with Puerto Rican
Wilkins Vélez
.
Sembello has spent much of his career scoring music to soundtracks for movies and film, some of which have achieved blockbuster
commercial success. They are featured on such movies as Cocoon
, Gremlins
, Summer Lovers
, The Monster Squad
and Independence Day
, among many others.
In 2008, Michael Sembello worked with saxophonist Michael Lington on his album Heat,[5] which was nominated as Jazztrax Album of the Year for 2008. Michael and his brother Danny Sembello penned three songs with Lington for the project. Sembello travels to Brazil frequently and is good friends with Daniel Jobim, the grandson of legendary composer Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Sembello has recorded his vocals in six languages and is continually writing, producing and releasing albums. In May 2009 the allbum "Moon Island" was released on EMI Japan
. The award-winning album consists of American pop songs
given new arrangements with a strong Brazilian influence.
He is recording a new album set to be released in the Fall of 2011. He intends to include the song "Carousel," the missing track from Michael Jackson's Thriller album (Quincy Jones decided to replace "Carousel" at the last minute with "Human Nature"). On the 25th Anniversary Edition of Thriller
a portion of the song "Carousel" was included (with the uncut version appearing on a few editions of the King of Pop compilations).
Michael Sembello continues to tour, write, produce and perform all over the world. Over the last year he performed in Ambon, Indonesia, Barcelona, Rome, Milan and Paris. In the spring of 2010, Coca-Cola UK kicked off their new Diet Coke campaign with Sembello's version of "Maniac."
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
from Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
.
Career
Sembello was born and raised in Philadelphia. He studied with jazz great Pat MartinoPat Martino
Pat Martino is an Italian-American jazz guitarist and composer within the post bop, fusion, mainstream jazz, soul jazz and hard bop idioms.-Biography:...
and began his career as a professional musician by becoming a session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
, working increasingly with high-profile artists as a studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
. The list of pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
personalities he worked with, or wrote for, includes Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
(from 1974 to 1979), The Temptations
The Temptations
The Temptations is an American vocal group having achieved fame as one of the most successful acts to record for Motown Records. The group's repertoire has included, at various times during its five-decade career, R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, and adult contemporary music.Formed in Detroit,...
, Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
, Diana Ross
Diana Ross
Diana Ernestine Earle Ross is an American singer, record producer, and actress. Ross was lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that included successful ventures into film and Broadway...
, Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan , frequently known as the Queen of Funk, is a 10-time Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter who gained fame in the 1970s as the frontwoman and focal point of the funk band Rufus. While still a member of the group in 1978, Khan embarked on a successful solo career...
, George Benson
George Benson
George Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....
, Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
, Stanley Clarke
Stanley Clarke
Stanley Clarke is an American jazz musician and composer known for his innovative and influential work on double bass and electric bass guitar as well as for his numerous film and television scores...
, David Sanborn
David Sanborn
David Sanborn is an American alto saxophonist. Though Sanborn has worked in many genres, his solo recordings typically blend jazz with instrumental pop and R&B. He released his first solo album Taking Off in 1975, but has been playing the saxophone since before he was in high school...
, Donna Summer
Donna Summer
LaDonna Adrian Gaines , known by her stage name, Donna Summer, is an American singer/songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s. She has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Summer is a five-time Grammy winner and was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach...
, Miguel Mateos
Miguel Mateos
Miguel Mateos is a rock singer/songwriter from Villa Pueyrredón, Argentina. Outside of Argentina, he is considered one of the most important exponents of Rock en Español, specially in the 1980s when he along with Charly Garcia, Soda Stereo, Enanitos Verdes, Virus, Sumo, Fabulosos Cadillacs, Rata...
and New Edition
New Edition
New Edition is an R&B group formed in Boston in 1978. The group reached its height of popularity during the 1980s. They were the progenitors of the boy band movement of the 1980s and 1990s and led the way for groups like New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men, Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync...
among many others.
He released his first solo album, Bossa Nova Hotel
Bossa Nova Hotel
Bossa Nova Hotel is the debut album of rock singer/guitarist Michael Sembello. The album contained ten tracks including the smash hit "Maniac" from the motion picture Flashdance, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 on September of 1983. The album itself peaked at #80 on the Billboard 200. "Automatic...
in 1983, and the song "Maniac
Maniac (song)
"Maniac" is a synthpop song performed by Michael Sembello. The song was used in the 1983 film Flashdance and was inspired by the 1980 horror film Maniac.The film Maniac was about a serial killer who stalks his victims in New York City...
" was selected for inclusion in the movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
Flashdance
Flashdance
Another song used in the film, "Maniac", was also nominated for an Academy Award. It was written by Michael Sembello and Dennis Matkosky, and was inspired by the 1980 horror film Maniac. The lyrics about a killer on the loose were rewritten so that it could be used in Flashdance...
. This song went on to become the third highest grossing song from a soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
. His contribution to that soundtrack was rewarded with a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
in 1983 for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special.
Sembello produced
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
guitarist Jennifer Batten
Jennifer Batten
Jennifer Batten is an American guitarist, who has worked as both a session musician and solo artist. She has released three studio albums: her 1992 debut, Above Below and Beyond, was produced by former Stevie Wonder guitarist Michael Sembello. In 1997, she released the worldbeat-influenced Jennifer...
's first solo album, Above Below and Beyond
Above Below And Beyond
-Personnel:*Jennifer Batten – electric guitar, vocals , talk box, vocoder, arrangement, spoken vocals , engineering, production*Michael Sembello – vocals, vocoder, arrangement, engineering, production...
in 1992. In 1994, he produced Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
singer Valeria Lynch
Valeria Lynch
-Biography:Valeria Lynch was born on January 7, 1952 in the neighborhood of Villa Urquiza, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Is the first child of the marriage of Maria Antonia Spano and José Julio Lancellotti....
's album Caravana de Sueños (1994), and co-wrote the title song with Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
Wilkins Vélez
Wilkins Vélez
German Wilkins Vélez, commonly known as Wilkins , is a Puerto Rican pop music singer and composer.-Early years:Wilkins was born in the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, but raised in Mexico City, Mexico. His father, Germán Vélez Forestier, was a radio announcer and part-time singer...
.
Sembello has spent much of his career scoring music to soundtracks for movies and film, some of which have achieved blockbuster
Blockbuster (entertainment)
Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...
commercial success. They are featured on such movies as Cocoon
Cocoon (film)
The score for Cocoon was composed and conducted by James Horner. The soundtrack was released twice, through Polydor Records in 1985 and a reprint through P.E.G. in 1997 and features eleven tracks of score and a vocal track performed by Michael Sembello...
, Gremlins
Gremlins
Gremlins is a 1984 American horror comedy film directed by Joe Dante, released by Warner Bros. The film is about a young man who receives a strange creature—called a Mogwai—as a pet, which then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive, evil monsters. It was followed by a sequel,...
, Summer Lovers
Summer Lovers
Summer Lovers is a 1982 film written and directed by Randal Kleiser, starring Peter Gallagher, Daryl Hannah and Valerie Quennessen, and filmed on location on the island of Santorini, Greece. The original music score is composed by Basil Poledouris...
, The Monster Squad
The Monster Squad
The Monster Squad is a comedy/horror film written by Shane Black and Fred Dekker and directed by Fred Dekker . It was released by Tri-Star Pictures on August 14, 1987. The film features the classic monsters , led by Count Dracula...
and Independence Day
Independence Day (film)
Independence Day is a 1996 science fiction film about an alien invasion of Earth, focusing on a disparate group of individuals and families as they converge in the Nevada desert and, along with the rest of the human population, participate in a last-chance counterattack on July 4 – the same...
, among many others.
In 2008, Michael Sembello worked with saxophonist Michael Lington on his album Heat,[5] which was nominated as Jazztrax Album of the Year for 2008. Michael and his brother Danny Sembello penned three songs with Lington for the project. Sembello travels to Brazil frequently and is good friends with Daniel Jobim, the grandson of legendary composer Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Sembello has recorded his vocals in six languages and is continually writing, producing and releasing albums. In May 2009 the allbum "Moon Island" was released on EMI Japan
EMI Records
EMI Records is the flagship record label founded by the EMI company in 1972 and launched in January 1973 as the successor to its Columbia label. The EMI label was launched worldwide...
. The award-winning album consists of American pop songs
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
given new arrangements with a strong Brazilian influence.
He is recording a new album set to be released in the Fall of 2011. He intends to include the song "Carousel," the missing track from Michael Jackson's Thriller album (Quincy Jones decided to replace "Carousel" at the last minute with "Human Nature"). On the 25th Anniversary Edition of Thriller
Thriller (album)
Thriller is the sixth studio album by American recording artist Michael Jackson. It was released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records as the follow-up to Jackson's critically and commercially successful 1979 album Off the Wall...
a portion of the song "Carousel" was included (with the uncut version appearing on a few editions of the King of Pop compilations).
Michael Sembello continues to tour, write, produce and perform all over the world. Over the last year he performed in Ambon, Indonesia, Barcelona, Rome, Milan and Paris. In the spring of 2010, Coca-Cola UK kicked off their new Diet Coke campaign with Sembello's version of "Maniac."
Albums
- 1983: Bossa Nova HotelBossa Nova HotelBossa Nova Hotel is the debut album of rock singer/guitarist Michael Sembello. The album contained ten tracks including the smash hit "Maniac" from the motion picture Flashdance, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 on September of 1983. The album itself peaked at #80 on the Billboard 200. "Automatic...
– #80 U.S. - 1986: Without Walls
- 1992: Caravan of Dreams
- 1997: Backwards in Time
- 2002: Ancient Future
- 2003: The Lost Years
Singles
- 1983: "ManiacManiac (song)"Maniac" is a synthpop song performed by Michael Sembello. The song was used in the 1983 film Flashdance and was inspired by the 1980 horror film Maniac.The film Maniac was about a serial killer who stalks his victims in New York City...
" – #1 US #43 UKUK Singles ChartThe UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... - 1983: "Automatic Man" – #34 U.S.
- 1985: "Gravity" (from the film, CocoonCocoon (film)The score for Cocoon was composed and conducted by James Horner. The soundtrack was released twice, through Polydor Records in 1985 and a reprint through P.E.G. in 1997 and features eleven tracks of score and a vocal track performed by Michael Sembello...
) - 1985: "Talk"
- 1986: "Tear Down the Walls"
- 1986: "Wonder Where You Are"
- 1992: "Heavy Weather"