Named by Billboard Magazine as the #8 Greatest Dance Artist of All Time and the #3 greatest from the Last Decade (trailing only Madonna and Beyoncé), Kristine W has proven herself a lasting talent. Through nearly twenty-five years in music, she has consistency delivered songs that touch hearts and souls and compel bodies to find the mighty groove out on the dance floor.  She’s had 17 #1 singles, tying Mariah Carey for the sixth-most Billboard #1 dance hits.  

In addition, Kristine made waves in the cabaret circuit, starring alongside her longtime friend, the Emmy-Award winning TV personality, style expert, fashion designer and New York Times best-selling author, Carson Kressley.  Together, the dynamic duo toured the USA, presenting lovely evenings of comedy and jazz music classics in a live stage show called Straight Up with a Twist.

 

Kristine W has made a career by focusing on the art and profession of being a singer, songwriter and musician.  She enjoys a grassroots mutual affection with fans who revere her voice, appreciate how the aspects of life and emotions she sings about echo their own feelings and experiences.

 

So how did a ranch-raised small-town girl from rural Washington State end up as “the most soulful vocalist in dance music, period,” according to All Music Guide? Kristine credits Donna Summer for instilling the love of dance into her.   “She had that big gorgeous voice,” says Kristine of the late disco music pioneer and superstar. “Her voice sounded almost like gospel to me.  It was dance with the big background vocals and the layered harmonies. She was everything I would aspire to.”

 

Kristine’s mother was also an entertainer.  She showed Kristine that a singing career was possible. “Mom did it because my Dad passed away when we were babies and it was a matter of survival. Singing and performing was how she was able to keep food on the table for us,” Kristine explains. “It showed me the power of music.”

 

From almost the time she could walk, Kristine was singing in church, talent contests and local Oprys. She learned to play guitar and piano from her grandmother and took up alto saxophone at seven years old to help her with her scat singing and improvisation. She would ride her bike around her hometown of Pasco, WA searching out classic jazz albums at yard and garage sales. “I studied with jazz coaches and was in all the jazz choirs, church choirs and in R&B groups. Won all the local talent contests and then went to Seattle and Portland and Spokane and beat them all there.”

 

Ultimately Kristine won the biggest local competition, Miss Washington, and went on to compete for Miss America, winning the opening swimsuit and talent categories (the latter by singing the Gershwin Broadway classic “Summertime”). The scholarship funds she earned enabled her to head out from Pasco to pursue her musical dreams. 

 

“I took my scholarship money and headed to Las Vegas,” Kristine explains. “I figured I could work my way through college performing music. And I did. As soon as I arrived in Vegas, I started getting hired to do everything.”

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She was determined to front and lead her own band. “I heard a lot of you can’t do that, you can’t do this, you’re not going to be a female bandleader, it’s not gonna happen, you’re going to have to sing with somebody else’s band. I sung with other people’s bands until I made enough money to buy my own PA and put together my own band.”

 

And so she did, leading her group Kristine W and the Sting to prominence in the fiercely competitive Vegas market, eventually performing at the Las Vegas Hilton more than any other entertainer, including Elvis. “I won Entertainer of the Year, Best Singer, Best Band, Best Showband,” explains Kristine. “I had 18 employees. I was the most successful female bandleader probably ever as far as showbands go.”

 

Record labels and production companies constantly courted Kristine with offers to sing every style of popular music imaginable. But her band’s specialty – molding pop and rock hits and classics into propulsive dance numbers – belied her musical aim. “I’m a high energy person,” she says. “I love the energy of dance music, always have. It’s really joyful and happy. To me dance music is like the energy of life.”

 

So she took her voice and songs to Europe, where dance music reigns supreme and most of the genre’s cutting edge producers and mixers are found, and recorded her first album in London. In 1996, “Feel What You Want,” Kristine’s debut single, made an immediate mark in the dance clubs, soaring to #1 here and abroad and becoming a dance floor classic. “One More Try” followed for another #1 dance hit, and a third chart-topper on the album’s title song, “Land of the Living,” secured Kristine’s place as a new dance floor star. When the album was officially released in 1997, Kristine’s in-store concert at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square drew lines of adoring fans around the block.

 

She signed with RCA Records and followed with more #1 hits on her 2000 album, Stronger like its title tune and “Lovin’ You.” Just as she was establishing her career, Kristine was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive strain of leukemia and given only a 30 percent chance of survival. She was given an experimental stem cell transplant and spent two years fighting the disease while also raising two infant children. Ironically, songs she had written before being struck by the disease like “Land of the Living” and “One More Try” proved almost prophetic as well as motivational as Kristine struggled to overcome the disease. “My music always seems to give me the inspiration to keep fighting for it,” Kristine notes.

 

When Kristine returned with Fly Again on the pioneering indie dance label, Tommy Boy, in 2003, she racked up three more #1s: the title song, “Save My Soul” and “The Wonder of It All.” Writing the album while hospitalized and recovering, Kristine further distinguished herself as an artist whose songs of struggle and triumph speak to the lives of countless fans as well. After topping the charts again with her dance remake of the Ashford/Simpson-penned Diana Ross hit “The Boss,” Kristine then debuted as a totally independent and self-managed artist with The Power of Music in 2009. Its seven #1 hits proved Kristine’s enduring appeal as a major dance music artist.

 

Next up was a longtime singer’s dream project that also fulfilled a promise to her mother: Straight Up with a Twist, a Top 15 two CD jazz chart album, on which she enjoyed three radio hits, including a sensual reworking of her first dance hit, “Feel What You Want” and a jazz rendition of heroine Donna Summers’ disco music landmark, “On The Radio.” Kristine also transformed such rock classics as “Stairway to Heaven” and “Take It to the Limit” into vocal jazz stunners, redid “The Boss” in yet another genre, and closed the set with her impassioned reading of the folk-pop standard “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”

 

Kristine returned to dance with her next album, New & Number Ones, revisiting some of her past hits with new mixes and edits and offering new songs that also topped the charts. The collection featured seven re-worked Kristine W originals, including “I Get Up,” “So Close To Me,” Glow On,” “Busted,” “and “Through the Fire.” “Land of the Living” (1997) got a Subgroover edit, ‘96’s “One More Try” enjoyed an expansive JRMX mix, and “Lovin’ You” from 2001 was edited by Soul Seekerz.  “Love Come Home” opened the album in Subgroover style and closed the set with a Frankie Knuckles Vs. Bitrocka Epic Club Duet.  (Love Come Home went Top 5 on Billboard’s Clubs Songs Chart in 2015 and Top 30 on the UK Club Chart.)  

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The collection was rounded out by covers of Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire” and Donna Summer’s “Sometimes Like Butterflies”; a tribute edit that recalled the golden days of disco.

 

Kristine returned to the dance floor in 2018 with “Stars”, her 17th Billboard #1.  The song was included on Billboard’s "Best 100 Dance Songs of 2018,” coming in at #25, next to Ariana Grande and U2.

 

Her last album release was 2020’s Love and Lies. Distributed globally through The Orchard, songs included “Just a Lie,” “No More,” and “No One.”  Inspired by Kristine W’s divorce from her longtime husband, all songs on the album dealt with love in its complexities: the deception from others as well as the lies we tell ourselves.  The producers who lent their talent to the album included Hans W. Mallon from Holland, best known for his work with Tiesto, Joey Moskowitz, Jesper Kettenis and Phill Wellz.  London superstar FREEJAK remixed “Stars” for the album.

 

Kristine’s next album, title TBD, is scheduled to release in early 2023. 

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“I love creating the work and seeing people’s reaction to it,” Kristine W concludes. “My voice is a gift and I’m thankful for it. It has definitely made my life very interesting. I’ve gotten to make a difference and bring a lot of joy to the world, and that’s really what’s important.” 

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