No DL love for Stephanie Mills

I like her. She’s got a son with Downs and does a lot of work for raising funds for research.

She did peak in the eighties. Amazing voice, but standing next to Whitney, Mariah and other singing beauties...it was obvious who was gonna sell more records in the video heavy eighties and nineties.

I think her voice is a joke, she sounds like she's pinching her nose. Maybe some people find that appealing, but obviously most people wouldn't and didn't.

"almost snagging Michael Jackson"

Where on Bizarro World?

I liked her well enough,but I did find her voice a little nasally.

Say HELLO to an OLD ROMANCE

Say HELLO to a SECOND CHANCE!!!!

Bettah than EVAAAAAAHHHHHHH

Bettah than EVAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"Whatcha Gonna Do With My Lovin" is a perfect song -- elegant, exuberant, sassy -- and she sings the hell out of it. It is my iPod perennial and it will be on my iPod when I die in 2094.

For R3...

She laid into Sam Smith over Michael too...

"Whatcha Gonna Do With My Loving" was a great song, when remade by Inner City anyway. So dreamy, like a lazy, rainy afternoon.

^^^It's a great song r9...a lot of Broadway stars don't always successfully transition to making albums, Stephanie was one of the few. Barbra and Bette were others.

Yasss hunty!! 💃🏿😃

She did a song about rough trade!

Still great.

Great thread idea

LOVE her. Saw her open for Jermaine Jackson in the 80’s

[quote]almost snagging Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson did not have sex with adult women.

My friend decorated her house in the 80’s. she’s not very bright.

Love her, love her music, but she is a bit of a Black Supremicist, see Sam Smith thread or search for her fascination with Louis Farrakhan (he performed one of her marriages) for some evidence. She is good in concert and gracious with her fans. Her voice is starting to fade (see recent Aretha tribute footage), but she still has “it.” I will always be a fan.

Actually, she was holding her own with Anita and Whitney there for a while. Her 1987 album is the best selling of her career (it went to number one on the R and B charts)and gave her two number one hits. Her follow up album gave her another two number one hits.

People tend to think she peaked with disco. They forget she did even better in the late 80's.

Was she on the pop charts in the late 80s, or was it the R&B charts? I don't really remember hearing her stuff on the top 40.

She along with Miki Howard, Angela Bofill, Phyllis Hyman, Evelyn Champagne King, etc are my personal 80's soundtrack. But then Whitney came around and swept them all away.

Back in the 70s she was America's dwarf sweetheart!

She was a huge seller on the R and B charts R20. But If I were your woman the album went top thirty on the Hot 100.

She's only 4'9". That is TINY. When a few years back they did "The Wiz," they had her sing "The Feeling We Once Had" sitting down on stage so she didn't look ridiculous singing to a Dorothy that towered over her.

I loved her voice when she was a young woman, but she's lost most of it. She just didn't compare to Tasha Thomas's standout performance of that song in the OBC (it's the most beautiful song in that entire score).

Who goes to a Jermaine Jackson concert, R15?

She could put over a ballad, and she sounds good with lush orchestration.

And she know how to finish a song strong.

Never Knew Love Like This Before was her biggest pop hit.

She and Shalamar were the sweetest soul sounds of 1980.

And she did some light funk as well.

[quote] Who goes to a Jermaine Jackson concert, [R15]?

Her visage suggests Peg Bundy.

Not a pretty girl.

Let’s Get Serious was a solid song!

She's a wonderful singer with true star quality. Too bad her career petered out

She’s gotten better looking as she’s aged. Numerous work on her, skin, teeth and nose. She also lost weight by the time she released her Casablanca LP, Tantalizingly Hot. She covered a Diana Ross song, “ I can’t Give Back the Love”. Not her best album, but she made it work. She got tired of people saying that she wasn’t attractive or sexy. She did develop a nice body and Bob Mackie did her costumes for concerts. The surgeries and her impeccable grooming made her easier on the eyes.

Pre-surgeries:

Post-surgeries--nearly unrecognizable as who she used to be.

She won the best female r&b vocal grammy for “Never knew love like this before” in 1981 beating out Diana Ross who was expected to win for “upside down” and was coming off a career high year with the Diana album.

I saw her in concert recently. I saw her up close and she looks marvelous for 61 years old.

Once she got her nose and teeth fixed, she had quite a nice face. But her head is so large in comparison to her tiny body.

I only know her for this. Loved the song and the movie.

R28. The Medicine Song video is an 80s classic!

[quote]She along with Miki Howard, Angela Bofill, Phyllis Hyman, Evelyn Champagne King, etc are my personal 80's soundtrack. But then Whitney came around and swept them all away.

True. When Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson hit in the mid-80s, everything changed. Lots of female artists were left behind.

Yes...and music videos required a certain look, tall, thin but shapely and for women of color, the dark but not too dark skin and a certain mimicking of the mainstream standard of beauty. Try as she might, Stephanie was never gonna look like Whitney or Jody, Pebbles or Janet. But I did think that she looked hot in “Something In The Way” and “Comfort of a Man” videos.

Shes a crazy pedophilia apologist and is a racist. Why does she think every artist has to like Michael Jackson?

How is she a racist?

Don't forget she also sang the original Bosom Buddies theme song, Shake Me Loose.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Jermaine Jackson's 1984 album hit double platinum - the one with the duet with Michael? He had a hot solo career at one point (just overshadowed)

Loved her rendition of Home on Showtime at the Apollo

I love the cheap video for Medicine Song. What were they attempting with that ruffle pinned around Stephanie’s waist when she is in the red leotard? It doesn’t even go the whole way around.

R40 must be white

From her last decent album IMO...and she looks good here too...

Girl can sing...she is my favorite soul female singer of all time. Stephanie And Phyllis Hyman. Peerless.

My mother had all her albums. I’d spend hours doodling my own version of their covers. Seeing them is a total nostalgia trip.

I thought that she was attractive after all the work she had done. I saw her in person promoting her first album *shudder*. Some people really do benefit from plastic surgery. No shame in this at all.

She had body too...

The video for The Medicine Song looks like a masterpiece compared to Pilot Error, which is a fantastic song deserving more than the two-bit schlock it got.

I think they blew their budget on the chimp.

Pilot Error came from her Merciless LP, an uneven effort at best. Her cover of Prince’s “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” is sublime though.

Ironically the things that made her unattractive in some peoples eyes were the reasons for her spectacular voice. Short neck, wide mouth and nose-these things are said to help give some singers powerful voices.

R56 I always used to make fun of that Medicine Song video, particularly the part when she rubs her ring at the end.

No one could imitate her, that is for sure. No one else sounds like her - her voice is amazing.

Stephanie with Diana Ross, 1975. Looks like they are backstage during THE WIZ...if Steph had only known how things would turn out.

She calls herself Michael’s chocolate drop.

She wanted Michael's peen inside her quite deeply, she lusted after him. Of course, Michael preferred eating 7 year-old boy ass. That's why Mills is so nasty to people who call out the truth about MJ, because she wanted to be Mrs. Jackson. She's bitter as hell about it.

I do find it odd that she still comes to his defense. I get loyalty though. She herself never really had a childhood and her family leeched off of her too; maybe she felt a kinship with him.

People told her she would not be able to make the film version of The Wiz because of her lack of physical beauty. People in showbiz are cruel like that. That must have hurt her so bad. She alluded to this on the Rosie O'Donnell Show a decade ago - said people told her she was too short, too dark, too ugly. Rosie didn't say anything. Her biggest detractors were other black women. But even Playboy Magazine made disparaging remarks about her looks when their theater critic reviewed The Wiz, calling her "a homely actress with a huge voice and no stage presence". Unfair because Bette Midler and Liza Minnelli were not pretty, but they were able to have successful careers in film, records and Broadway.

My goodness !! was she a colored thalidomide baby ?

I can’t wait for the Mamie Eisenhower poster to join his muse in the Great Beyond.

Never funny. Not once.

I love your new line of baby clothes R67

Bette Midler and Liza Minnelli had tremendous stage presence.

I remember the infomercials she did with Marla Gibbs and DL fave Dionne Warwick for Edgar Morris...he had a skin care regimen she used....

When I Think Of Home still gives me chills.

My favorite TV scene last year - Never Knew Love Like This Before. From Pose.