Emma Bunton

Emma Lee Bunton (born 21 January 1976) is an English pop singer, songwriter, and occasional actress, originally from the girl group Spice Girls, where she was known as "Baby Spice" for being the youngest member and often wearing "baby doll" dresses.

Personal

Bunton was born in Finchley and grew up in Woodside Park, both in Barnet, North London. Her parents, Pauline, a karate instructor, and Trevor, a milkman, split up when she was eleven, and she stayed with her mother.
She attended St Theresa's Roman Catholic Primary School in Finchley, and then went on to go to the Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone, Westminster.
She has been linked with such stars as Nigel Harman, Justin Timberlake, and 911 lead singer Lee Brennan. Her eight-year boyfriend is former Damage and current CherryBlackStone lead singer Jade Jones; they were rumoured to be engaged and to marry in March 2007. This rumour was denied several days later.
In 1993, she appeared in the on-going ITV1's policial/drama series The Bill.

Music career

1994-2000: Spice Girls

She joined the Spice Girls (then still called Touch) in 1994 after the original fifth Touch member, Michelle Stephenson, left the group. The group became one of the most successful musical artists of the 1990s selling over forty million albums with the studio releases Spice, Spiceworld, and Forever. She was known as Baby Spice because she often wore baby doll dresses and had her blonde hair in pigtails. Their debut single "Wannabe" became the first of a string of number-ones in the United Kingdom (nine in total) and reached the top position in thirty-seven countries around the globe, including Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Other successful releases followed including "Say You'll Be There" and "2 Become 1" from Spice; "Spice Up Your Life", "Too Much", "Stop", and "Viva Forever" from Spiceworld; and "Goodbye", "Holler", and "Let Love Lead the Way" from Forever. The Spice Girls stopped recording in 2000. Many rumors circulated about a reunion for the group's tenth anniversary, but nothing materialized.

2001-2003: A Girl Like Me

Her debut solo album entitled A Girl Like Me spawned the UK number-one hit "What Took You So Long?", as well as the top five hits "What I Am" (a cover of a 1998's song earlier recorded by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians) and "Take My Breath Away" (which was not a cover of Berlin's 1986's hit), and top twenty hit "We're Not Gonna Sleep Tonight". The album sold around 125,000 in the UK. During the beginning stages of work on her second album, Bunton felt she was better off at another label, and left Virgin. She also recorded the track "(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind" for the soundtrack to the 1999 film .

2004-2005: Free Me

After she left Virgin, Bunton signed a contract with Spice Girls' manager Simon Fuller's 19 Management and a complex licensing deal with Polydor Records, which included TV work and releasing music. In spring of 2003, she returned as Emma (losing the Bunton), with the top five hit "Free Me" and later that year released "Maybe", which also went top ten and outsold the previous single. In spring of 2004, the single "I'll Be There" and the album Free Me were released. The album contained '60s-style pop gems and went on to outsell her first album, something other solo Spice Girls have yet to achieve.
In the run-up to the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest, rumours circulated that Emma was being lined up as a rare big-name representative for the UK, in an attempt to wipe away the national humiliation of the "nul points" achieved by the previous year's inexperienced entrants Jemini. This didn't materialise, but the fact that she ended up performing the interval act in the UK's Eurovision pre-selection show Making Your Mind Up suggested there may have been a glimmer of truth in the rumours at some stage. The performance gave her another outlet to indulge her passion for '60s pop - she started with a nostalgic burst of the UK's winning song from the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest, Sandie Shaw's "Puppet on a String", which then melted into her own hit "Maybe". A few months before, when appearing as a guest star in the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, Bubble (Jane Horrocks) told her that her PR agent, Edina (Jennifer Saunders), had entered her for Eurovision, which puts another slant on this rumour that she was up for Eurovision.
The album Free Me was released in the United States on January 25, 2005 but only managed to reach number one hundred and eighty-three on the U.S. Billboard 200 despite appearing on major U.S. talk shows to promote the album such as The View, Live with Regis and Kelly, and The Tony Danza Show. She also made a number of promotional appearances for album signings in the U.S., including the gay bar XL Lounge, in New York City. The first single in the U.S. is a dance remix of the title track, which reached the top five of both the Hot Dance Club Play chart and the Hot Dance Airplay chart. "Maybe" also followed "Free Me"'s success in the U.S. dance chart.

2006-present: Life in Mono

Emma has been working on her album since 2004; on August 2006, she left an audio message on her official website, telling the fans about her new album, some of the things she said were that she was on the last touches of the process, she was working with an orchestra and that the album will be finished around September 2006. The album will be entitled Life in Mono, after it appeared with this name to pre-order on the websites of several online music retailers.
Emma released the official charity single for the BBC's 2006 Children in Need appeal, recording a cover of Petula Clark's '60s classic "Downtown". So far it has reached number nine in the The Box's Box Breakers and debuted at number twenty-four on the UK downloads chart and number thirty-six on the Irish downloads chart. With its physical format released on 20 November it reached number three, being the highest climber of the week. The album Life in Mono has a confirmed release date two weeks later (4 December). "Downtown" is now Emma's third top three solo hit, fifth top five solo hit, seventh top ten solo hit, and ninth consecutive top twenty hit in the UK.
The album leaked to the Internet on 20 November 2006.

Other work

In August 2006, former Spice Girls' manager Simon Fuller announced that he was planning a television sitcom based around Emma Bunton. Emma has also been lined up as one of the celebrity contestants for the autumn 2006 series of the popular BBC programme Strictly Come Dancing. She has been partnered with professional dancer Darren Bennett. She is the bookies' favourite to win the show. So far on the show she has danced mambo, Quickstep, Jive, Foxtrot, Viennese Waltz, Samba, cha-cha-cha, American Smooth, Paso Doble, and the Waltz.
She has also appeared in the fifth and final season of the show Absolutely Fabulous playing herself in a couple of episodes.
Emma is due to make a cameo appearance as herself in the Australian soap opera Neighbours. The show is due to air in early 2007.