Belinda Metz - The Minx (1982)

Luckily our system is down today at work so I finally have a moment to add another post! Last week I found a rarity that I've been looking for for some time, Belinda Metz's debut LP The Minx, and I managed to rip it (while doing extensive housecleaning) for your listening pleasure. Belinda was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1960. Though she began her career in the entertainment industry as a dancer, she soon moved on to music and signed a deal with Toronto label Quantum Records. Working with local producers she created a very rock-oriented debut album and released the single "Trouble (At The End Of The Line)". She toured the album extensively across Canada over the next couple of years, generating local buzz. Then in 1985 she entered Talent Quest '85, a talent competition sponsored by cigarette company Craven "A" that was designed to find young talent that would appeal to their desired demographic of 18 to 24 year-olds, and whose music and tours Craven "A" could sponsor and thus advertise through. Belinda was one of two acts chosen and she signed a deal with popular Canadian label Attic Records. She was fortunate enough to be teamed up with with respected Canadian producer David Tyson, who is best known for later producing Alannah Myles and Amanda Marshall. Like fellow Canadian singers and Isle postees Cindy Valentine and Sheree Jeacocke, she softened her rock edge for her second album and recorded songs that were much more pop, hoping to appeal to a wider audience. And she did, with her first single "What About Me" becoming a huge radio hit in Canada and earning her award nominations. Her album Electric Splash was released soon after (and you can download it at my affiliate blog The Music Spectrum or on iTunes). She released a second single, "Subway Dances", but soon after was involved in a near fatal car accident, which derailed her promising pop music career. She slowly healed through intensive physiotherapy and when she reemerged in the entertainment industry, she chose to focus on acting, which she had already casually dabbled in, and voice work. She has since been a familiar voice in Canadian television commercials and a familiar face on Canadian television, with her highest profile acting gigs being a four year stint in the mid-1990s on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and a two year stint from 1999 to 2001 on Disney Channel's So Weird. She has continued to appear on television and has also finally revisited her love of music, independently recording a ton of new tracks in several different genres. Feel free to take a listen at her Myspace page.

Download The Minx

1		Trouble (At The End Of The Line)
2		Bad Little Baby Boy
3		Saturday Night
4		Anything Less Than Love
5		Midnight Cruiser
6		Niteclub Sanitarium
7		Cold-Blooded Red Hot Love
8		Give Me A Home
9		Baby, It's Love