Julee Cruise

Julee Cruise
Julee Cruise performing live, 2008
Background information
Born	December 1, 1956 (1956-12-01) Creston, Iowa, United States
Genres	Dream pop
Occupations	Singer, songwriter, actress
Instruments	Vocals, french horn
Years active	1985–present
Labels	Warner Bros. Records WEA International Inc. Avex Asia Ltd. Distinct'ive Records Playhouse Records
Website	Official Myspace

Julee Cruise (born December 1, 1956, Creston, Iowa) is an American singer, and actress.

With a distinctive, airy voice, Cruise has recorded three albums, but is probably best known for "Falling," the theme song for the cult U.S. television series Twin Peaks. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, she collaborated with composer Angelo Badalamenti and film director David Lynch, who produced and wrote the lyrics for all of her released songs.

Biography

Early life and career

Julee Cruise studied French horn at Drake University and performed as a singer and actress in Minneapolis (notably in the role of Jinjur in stage adaptations of L. Frank Baum's Oz books). She moved to New York and played Janis Joplin in a revue called Beehive, whilst also working as a talent scout for Badalamenti.

Collaborations with Badalamenti and Lynch

Blue Velvet

In 1985, Badalamenti was composing the score for David Lynch's Blue Velvet, as well as serving as the vocal coach for the film's star, Isabella Rossellini. A key scene in Blue Velvet was intended to feature This Mortal Coil's version of Song to the Siren by Tim Buckley, but when the rights to the song proved prohibitively expensive, it was suggested that Badalamenti compose a pop song in the same style, with lyrics written by Lynch. Because the song required a vocalist with a haunting, ethereal voice, Badalamenti recommended Cruise, who had sung in a New York theater workshop Badalamenti had produced. The result of their initial collaboration was "Mysteries of Love", which figures prominently in Blue Velvet's closing scenes.

Floating Into The Night

Badalamenti and Lynch went on to write and produce additional songs for Cruise, most of which were featured in her debut album, Floating Into the Night. The album was released on 12 September 1989 by Warner Bros. Records, and charted on Billboard the following year. It also provided musical material for Lynch's Industrial Symphony No. 1, in which Cruise performed while "floating" from a harness dozens of feet above a stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Twin Peaks

The second, more significant project was the soundtrack to Lynch's Twin Peaks, for which Badalamenti composed the original score. The song "Falling", which became the orchestral theme for the television series, caused a minor sensation, winning a Grammy at the 33rd Grammy Awards for Best Pop Instrumental. The Twin Peaks soundtrack, featuring Cruise on the songs "Into the Night" and "The Nightingale" as well as on the vocal version of "Falling", eventually going gold (500,000+ copies) in the US, a rare feat for a television soundtrack. Cruise made a number of appearances on Twin Peaks as a singer at a local bar, and was prominently featured in both the show's landmark pilot episode and the episode where Laura Palmer's murderer is revealed, as well as in 1992's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. The campy but unsettling "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", the second single from Floating Into the Night, was released in 1990 and was also featured in an episode of Twin Peaks.

Cruise reinterpreted and sang the theme song for an episode of the USA Network show Psych. The episode, "Dual Spires" (s05/ep12 12/01/2010) was about a secluded town full of secrets and skeletons were they investigate the murder of a girl. It aired 20 years to the day after Laura Palmer's murder was revealed.

Saturday Night Live performance

Cruise appeared on Saturday Night Live on May 12, 1990, when scheduled performer Sinéad O'Connor refused to appear on the same show as guest host Andrew Dice Clay.

The Voice of Love

The following year, Cruise recorded a Lynch and Badalamenti produced cover of the Elvis Presley song "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" for the soundtrack of Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World. Afterward, Cruise maintained a relatively low profile until her second album, The Voice of Love, was released in 1993.

Other information

Cruise's early collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch were closely related to Lynch's film work, and their lyrics often reflect this. For example, "Into the Night" begins with the whispered words "Now it's dark", a line which was repeatedly spoken by Frank Booth, Dennis Hopper's character, in Blue Velvet. Lynch also photographed Cruise for the liner notes of Floating Into the Night and The Voice of Love, and created the sculptures featured on the covers of both albums. The trio also produced a cover of the minor Elvis Presley hit "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" for the celebrated soundtrack to Wim Wenders' 1992 film, "Until the End of the World."

Post Badalamenti and Lynch

The Art of Being a Girl

Cruise's long-delayed third album, The Art of Being a Girl, was released in 2002. This was the first of her albums for which Badalamenti and Lynch did not produce or write any of the music, with music and lyrics for each of the songs being written by Cruise herself (with the exception of an updated version of her classic single "Falling") and guest produced by Rick Strom and Mocean Worker.

Acting and live work

Cruise also acted and sang in the off Broadway cast of Return to the Forbidden Planet, a spoof of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and toured with The B-52's as Cindy Wilson's replacement on and off from 1992 through 2000. She also performed regularly with Bobby McFerrin's improvisational vocal group Voicestra/CircleSong.

She appeared as Andy Warhol (among other characters, including Susan Sontag) in the 2004 Keith Haring bio-musical Radiant Baby (musical) at the Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival, directed by George C. Wolfe.

Guest vocals

Cruise has also lent her vocals to works by a miscellaneous list of collaborators, mostly in electronic music.

She provided vocals and lyrics to several of the songs on Wide Angle (1999), the debut album by Welsh electronic music group Hybrid, notably the epic nuskool breaks track "If I Survive". Also in 1999, she performs on two songs on Don't Panic! by DJ Silver, ""Sweet Dreams" and "I'm Your Girl".

She appeared on the albums 1-900-Get-Khan (1999) and No Comprendo (2001) by dance artist Khan (Can Oral), and also performed live several times with him. The lyrics for many of these songs, such as "Body Dump", reflect Cruise's own interest in true crime.

She was featured in 2 songs on Supa DJ Dmitry's (formerly of Deee-Lite) album Scream Of Consciousness (2000), "Don't Talk Me Down" (originally issued on TVT 7311-0 12") and a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity".

She appears on a number of tracks on both the 2003 album Dreams Top Rock and the 2007 album Monstrous Surplus by German post-rock act, Pluramon.

More recently, Cruise has appeared as a guest vocalist on Sarcast While, the 2006 full-length album from the New York band, Time of Orchids, released on Tzadik Records. Her vocals also appear on five tracks on Kenneth Bager's 2006 album Fragments From A Space Cadet.

Cruise provides the vocals for Delerium's "Magic" song (on the Chimera album). Cruise also provided vocals alongside Pharrell on Handsome Boy Modeling School's song "Class System".

Cover versions, film soundtracks and adverts

Cruise has recorded several memorable covers over the years, including Sir Cliff Richard's "Wired for Sound" with B(if)tek, R.E.M.'s "It's The End of the World (and I Feel Fine)" with Eric Kupper, Eurythmics's "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" with DJ Silver, and David Bowie's "Space Oddity" with Supa DJ Dmitry.

In 1996, Cruise with The Flow appeared on the Scream soundtrack with the song "Artificial World (Interdimensional Mix)".

In 2001, Cruise contributed two exclusive tracks to the "Nutcracker: An American Nightmare" soundtrack CD Maxi-single, "In Your World Of Blue" and "Never Let You Go".

In 2003, Depeche Mode songwriter Martin Gore included a cover version of Cruise's song "In My Other World" (from her 1993 album The Voice of Love) on Counterfeit², the second in his series of cover albums dedicated to his own musical influences and atmospheric inspirations.

In 2003, Cruise's song "The World Spins" was featured in an extended ballet sequence in Robert Altman's The Company.

Cruise's song "Floating" was featured in TV advertisements and trailers for the show The Riches debuting on FX Networks in March 2007. The next year her music was used in CSI Miami and most recently in an upcoming episode of "Psych."

In 2009, her digital-only album "My Secret Life" with collaborator DJ Dmitry contained a cover of Donovan's "Season Of The Witch" and a cover (technically) of Hybrid's "Fatal Beating" called "A Fatal Beating".

Discography

Albums

• Floating into the Night (1989)
• The Voice of Love (1993)
• The Art of Being a Girl (2002)
• My Secret Life (2009, with DJ Dmitry)

Singles

Year	Title	Chart positions					Album
		US Hot 100	US Modern Rock	US Mainstream Rock	UK	AUS ARIA Chart
1990	"Falling"	-	11	-	7	1	Floating into the Night
1991	"Rockin' Back Inside My Heart"	-	-	-	66	-
	"Summer Kisses, Winter Tears"	-	-	-	-	-	Until the End of the World (soundtrack)
1993	"Movin' In on You"	-	-	-	-	-	The Voice of Love
1999	"If I Survive" (with Hybrid)	-	-	-	52	-	Wide Angle

Collaborations

• Khan (single, "Say Goodbye")
• Hybrid
• Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks soundtrack)
• Moby
• The B-52's
• Mocean Worker
• David Lynch
• B(if)tek
• Bobby McFerrin
• Kenneth Bager
• Ror Shak
• Delerium
• "Class System" w/ Handsome Boy Modeling School (Prince Paul & Dan The Automator)- White People (2004)

External links

• Grant, S. (1990), 'Mood Awakening' - Time Out article from October 17-24 1990
• Official Myspace
• Julee Cruise at the Internet Movie Database