Releases by cherrelle

Cherrelle (born Cheryl Anne Norton on October 13, 1958, in Los Angeles) is an American R&B singer who rose to prominence in the mid-1980s. Early in her career, she worked as a background and session vocalist, including with Norman Connors, which helped her build connections in the industry. Her signing to Tabu Records marked the start of her solo success and brought her into collaboration with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who shaped much of her sound. Her debut album Fragile (1984) showcased her airy, understated vocal style, and featured “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On,” a major R&B hit that later gained further attention through covers by Robert Palmer and Mariah Carey. Her follow-up, High Priority (1985), further established her commercially, especially through “Saturday Love,” her well-known duet with Alexander O’Neal. The song became a staple of mid-80s R&B and remains one of her most recognized tracks. Cherrelle continued her momentum with Affair (1988), which produced another duet with O’Neal called “Never Knew Love Like This,” along with solo singles that charted on R&B radio. In 1991, she released The Woman I Am, which showed some stylistic updates but arrived at a time when the R&B landscape was shifting. While these later projects didn’t match the commercial peak of her earlier records, they helped solidify her as a consistent voice of that era. In the years that followed, she stepped back from mainstream releases but stayed active through touring, occasional performances, and appearances at nostalgia and soul music events. Interviews and retrospectives have pointed to her influence on quieter vocal stylings in R&B, particularly among female artists who followed in the late 80s and 90s. Cherrelle’s work is also often cited in connection with the Minneapolis sound and the broader Jam and Lewis production legacy. Though she never pursued a heavy media presence, her recordings from the 1980s continue to be revisited by fans, sampled by other artists, and played on classic R&B and urban contemporary stations. Her contributions helped shape a period in R&B that blended dance elements with smooth, radio-friendly production. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.