 |
Mary MacGregor | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 6, 1948 Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1975–2000 |
| Labels | |
Mary MacGregor (born May 6, 1948) [2] is an American singer. She is best known for singing the 1976 song "Torn Between Two Lovers", which topped the Billboard charts for two weeks.
| This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(July 2019) |
MacGregor was born May 6, 1948, in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. [2] She began studying piano at age six, and was singing with bands by the time she was a teenager. After graduating from Saint Joseph's Academy in 1966, she briefly attended the University of Minnesota, and later began to tour the country with various acts and, in the process, catching the attention of Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul & Mary. She soon joined Yarrow, singing backup on a solo tour, and made an appearance on his Love Songs album. [3]
Signed to Ariola Records America, MacGregor released her debut single, "Torn Between Two Lovers", in late 1976; it became a smash hit by February 1977. The new year saw the single top both the pop [4] and adult contemporary charts and was certified as a gold record. [5] In addition, it reached #3 on Billboard's Country chart and also reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart. [6] Two further singles from the album of the same name, also written and produced by Yarrow, charted but were overwhelmed by the success of the title track.
MacGregor admitted in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits by Fred Bronson that she hated her own chart-topper, chiefly because she had little sympathy for the narrator of "Torn Between Two Lovers", a woman who confesses to her husband that she is having an affair, but pleads with her husband to stay with her and accept the situation. [7] MacGregor also said that the song indirectly led to the breakup of her own marriage, because her career kept her away from home so often that her relationship with her husband strained, and they decided to separate. [7] She did acknowledge that the song was successful because it appealed to listeners who had found themselves in the situation described in the lyrics. [8] [7]
She released several more albums, and had three more minor chart singles (including the song "Good Friend" from the 1979 Bill Murray film Meatballs ). [9] "Good Friend" was later added to her third and eponymous final album.
In 1980, MacGregor won best song and best performance at the World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, Japan with "What's the Use" which she had co-written with David Bluefield.
For the 1981 Japanese anime film Adieu Galaxy Express 999 , MacGregor wrote and performed two songs. They were "Sayonara" and "Love Light".
In 1983, Mike Love (of The Beach Boys) and MacGregor performed "Do You Hear What I Hear" from Scrooge's Rock N Roll Christmas.
In the mid-1980s, MacGregor performed in nightclubs around the Central Coast of California with Mary and the Blue Jays, a trio composed of MacGregor, James Royce on bass, and Jim Kennedy on guitar.
In 1999, she teamed up with fellow musician friends, Joe Ghiglia and John Holt, to form The Mary MacGregor Band. The result was an album called Perfect Yellow House.
She is also mentioned in the liner notes of 1976's The Steamboat Album as doing vocals for one of the tracks, "Rabbit Ears". The album was recorded by Yampa River Records in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
She now lives in California, has remarried, has two children and is retired.
| Year | Album | Chart positions | Label | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [10] | US Country [10] | AUS [11] | CAN | UK [6] | |||||
| 1976 | Torn Between Two Lovers | 17 | 3 | 35 | 28 | 59 | Ariola | ||
| 1978 | ...In Your Eyes | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| 1979 | Mary MacGregor's Greatest Hits | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| 1980 | Mary MacGregor | — | — | — | — | — | RSO | ||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that territory. | |||||||||
| Year | Title | Chart positions | Album | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [10] | US AC [10] | US Country [10] | AUS [11] | CAN | CAN AC | CAN Country | UK [6] | |||
| 1976 | "Torn Between Two Lovers" | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | Torn Between Two Lovers |
| 1977 | "This Girl (Has Turned into a Woman)" | 46 | 27 | 36 | — | 60 | 23 | 38 | — | |
| "For a While" | 90 | 38 | 86 | 100 | 77 | 14 | — | — | ||
| 1978 | "I've Never Been to Me" | — | 29 | — | — | — | 29 | — | — | In Your Eyes |
| "Memories" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| "The Wedding Song (There Is Love)" | 81 | 23 | — | — | — | — | — | — | Mary MacGregor's Greatest Hits | |
| 1979 | "Good Friend" | 39 | 11 | — | — | 86 | 6 | — | — | Mary MacGregor |
| 1980 | "Dancing Like Lovers" | 72 | 31 | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| "Somebody Please" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 1981 | "Sayonara" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Adieu Galaxy Express 999 (OST) |
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that territory. | ||||||||||
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk group formed in New York City in 1961 during the American folk music revival phenomenon. The trio consisted of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers. The group's repertoire included songs written by Yarrow and Stookey, early songs by Bob Dylan, and covers of other folk musicians. They were enormously successful in the early- and mid-1960s, with their debut album topping the charts for weeks, and helped popularize the folk music revival. After the death of Travers in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo under their individual names.
Patricia Mae Giraldo is an American singer and songwriter. In the United States, she has two multi-platinum albums, five platinum albums, and 15 US Billboard top 40 singles, while in Canada she had eight straight platinum albums, and she has sold over 36 million albums worldwide. She is also a four-time Grammy Award winner. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November 2022.
Mary Esther Wells was an American singer, who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s.
Yvonne Marianne Elliman is an American singer, songwriter, and actress who performed for four years in the first cast of the stage musical Jesus Christ Superstar. She scored a number of hits in the 1970s and achieved a US #1 hit with "If I Can't Have You". The song also reached #9 on the Adult Contemporary chart and number 4 in the UK Chart. Her cover of Barbara Lewis's "Hello Stranger" went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and "Love Me" was #5; at the time she had 3 top 10 singles. After a long hiatus in the 1980s and 1990s, during which time she left music to be with her family, she made a comeback album as a singer-songwriter in 2004.
Brenda Gail Webb, known professionally as Crystal Gayle, is an American country music singer widely known for her 1977 hit "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue". Initially, Gayle's management and record label were the same as that of her oldest sister, Loretta Lynn. Not finding success with the arrangement after several years, and with Lynn's encouragement, Gayle decided to try a different approach. She signed a new record contract and began recording with Nashville producer Allen Reynolds. Gayle's new sound was sometimes referred to as middle-of-the-road (MOR) or country pop, and was part of a bigger musical trend by many country artists of the 1970s to appeal to a wider audience. Subsequently, Gayle became one of the most successful crossover artists of the 1970s and 80s. She is known for her floor-length hair.
Jo Dee Marie Messina is an American country music artist. She has charted six number-one singles on the Billboard country music charts. She has been honored by the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music, and has been nominated for two Grammy Awards. She was the first female country artist to score three multiple-week number-one songs from the same album. To date, she has two platinum and three gold-certified albums by the RIAA.
Gary Gwyn Morris is an American singer and stage actor who charted a string of hits on the country music charts throughout the 1980s.
"Torn Between Two Lovers" is a song written by Peter Yarrow and Phillip Jarrell that speaks about a love triangle, and laments that "loving both of you is breaking all the rules". Mary MacGregor recorded it at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1976 and it became the title track of her first album.
Barbara Weathers is an American R&B/soul singer, and former lead singer of R&B vocal group, Atlantic Starr.
The Wonder Who? was a nom de disque of The Four Seasons for four single records released from 1965 to 1967. It was one of a handful of names used by the group at that time, including Frankie Valli and The Valli Boys. Wonder Who? recordings generally feature the falsetto singing by Valli, but with a softer falsetto than on "typical" Four Seasons recordings.
"Wedding Song (There Is Love)" is a title of a 1971 hit single by Paul Stookey: the song—which Stookey credits to divine inspiration— has since been recorded by many singers (with versions by Petula Clark and Mary MacGregor returning it to the Billboard Hot 100)—and remains a popular choice for performance at weddings.
Here Where There Is Love is Dionne Warwick's sixth studio album for Scepter Records, and was released on December 4, 1966. The album was recorded at Bell Sound Studios in New York City and was produced in full by Burt Bacharach and Hal David with Bacharach also arranging and conducting.
Mary MacGregor's Greatest Hits is an greatest hits album released in 1979 containing the singer's 1977 #1 hit "Torn Between Two Lovers" and a selection of other tracks from her two Ariola Records album releases as well the tracks from MacGregor's final Ariola single release "The Wedding Song " and "Benjamin". The album does not contain the singer's Top 40 hit from the Meatballs soundtrack: "Good Friend", which had been an RSO Records release.
Torn Between Two Lovers is the debut album by Mary MacGregor. It was produced and partly written by Peter Yarrow, and released in 1976.
"Two Lovers" is a single released in 1962 by Mary Wells on the Motown record label. The song was the third consecutive hit to be both written and produced by Smokey Robinson of The Miracles and recorded by Mary Wells, the two previous charters being "The One Who Really Loves You" and "You Beat Me to the Punch." The song's cleverly devised lyrics at first appear to be about a girl singing to one lover who is "sweet and kind" and a second who treats her bad and makes her sad; eventually, the girl reveals that the two lovers are actually the same person. The song became Wells's most successful release to date, reaching #1 on the Billboard R&B chart and #7 on the Billboard pop chart. Its success would be eclipsed two years later by the singer's most successful release, "My Guy."
"He Will Break Your Heart", is a song originally performed and co-written by Jerry Butler. It was a top-ten hit in 1960.
"Let It Flow" is a song by American R&B singer Toni Braxton. Written and produced by Babyface, the song was originally recorded for, and included on, the soundtrack to the 1995 motion picture Waiting to Exhale.
Anthology is a compilation album by country pop singer Juice Newton. It was originally released by Renaissance Records on October 13, 1998. The album covers her career from 1975 to 1989 and features 19 songs taken from her albums Juice Newton & Silver Spur, Juice, Quiet Lies, Can't Wait All Night, Old Flame, Emotion, and Ain't Gonna Cry. However, it includes the 1975 take of "The Sweetest Thing " from the first RCA album, not the 1981 hit version from Juice.
"Woman in Love" is a romantic ballad which afforded the Three Degrees a top-ten UK hit in 1979.
Next, he began looking for a deal for one of his backup singers, Mary MacGregor, who had sung on Love Songs.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
