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Holly Knight (born 1956) is an American songwriter, musician, and singer. She was a member of the 1980s pop rock groups Spider and Device, and wrote or co-wrote several hit singles for other artists, such as "Rag Doll", "Obsession", "Love Is a Battlefield", "The Best", "Invincible", "Better Be Good to Me", "The Warrior", and "Change".
In 2013, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She has won thirteen ASCAP Awards, and has co-written hits for numerous successful recording artists, including Tina Turner and Pat Benatar who each won Grammy Awards for their recordings of her songs.
Knight was already planning to leave Spider, when Dreamland president, songwriter and record producer Mike Chapman urged her to move to Los Angeles to pursue her songwriting career. She signed a publishing deal with his company, eventually signing to EMI Publishing. Knight and Chapman worked together on the top 5 U.S. hit "Better Be Good to Me" (1984) by Tina Turner and "Love Is a Battlefield" (1983) by Pat Benatar, each of which won a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Knight was replaced on keyboards in Spider, later renamed Shanghai for its eponymous and final album, before her former band folded in 1984.
Knight has written hits for some of the most successful artists in music, both on her own and in collaboration with others. For Pat Benatar, in addition to "Love Is a Battlefield", she wrote "Invincible". "The Best"—first recorded by Bonnie Tyler—became an international No. 1 single for Tina Turner. Knight wrote songs with Heart, Aerosmith, Rod Stewart, Bon Jovi, and many more. Tina Turner has recorded nine of her tunes, including "The Best", "Better Be Good to Me", and "In Your Wildest Dreams" (1996). Holly Knight was voted the Best Songwriter in Rolling Stone magazine's 11th annual poll, along with Phil Collins, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, and Bruce Springsteen.
In the mid-1980s, Knight had a second band called Device, that had a hit single "Hanging on a Heart Attack" from their one album 22B3 (1986). Although Spider and Device both had Top 40 hits, only Device received heavy-rotation on MTV for four consecutive months. In 1988, Holly released a self-titled solo album that featured her own rendition of "Love Is a Battlefield", as well "Heart Don't Fail Me Now", a single with background vocals by Daryl Hall.
Holly Knight's songs have been featured on film soundtracks for Weird Science (1985), Vision Quest (1985), Legend of Billie Jean (1985), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Legal Eagles (1986), The Secret of My Success (1987), Thelma & Louise (1991), Stuart Little 2 (2002), 13 Going on 30 (2004), What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004), Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), Anchorman 2 (2013), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Other Woman (2014), Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021), 80 For Brady (2023), and Cocaine Bear (2023); and hit television shows such as American Idol, The Voice, Nip/Tuck, The Singing Bee, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Simpsons, Family Guy, 30 Rock, South Park, Glee, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Necessary Roughness, the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, and the finale episode of The Voice (2011), in which Cee Lo Green performed a duet of "Love Is a Battlefield" with one of the final contestants. Most recently, Knight's songs have been featured on the Netflix show GLOW ("The Warrior"- theme song), Stranger Things, Mixed-ish, The Masked Singer, and Schitt's Creek. She wrote and produced the theme tune for the popular TV shows Angel (1999–2004) and Still Standing (2002–2006).
In 1988, Knight was listed in the "Best Songwriter Category/Readers Poll" of Rolling Stone along with Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, Paul Simon, and Billy Joel.
In the 21st century, Knight has also been active as a record producer. In 2009, she produced a jazz Extended play called Natural for Antonia Bennett, daughter of Tony Bennett, and in 2012, an alternative pop record of original songs for her, titled Ordinary Girl. In 2014, she produced a second full-length jazz record for Antonia Bennett of songs from the Great American Songbook called Embrace Me, on Perseverance records. She has also produced tracks for Otep, Fefe Dobson, The Donnas, the Australian band Porcelain, and 2014 Tony Award winner Lena Hall.
Knight has been mentioned in several autobiographies, including I, Tina by Tina Turner (1986), Between a Heart and a Rock Place by Pat Benatar (2010), and Kicking and Screaming by Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson of Heart (2013), by Pamela Des Barres (2005), My Love Story by Tina Turner (2018), and All I Ever Wanted by Kathy Valentine (2020).
Knight contributed her story to the 2017 book Because I Was a Girl: True Stories for Girls of All Ages, published by Henry Holt and Company.
Her song, "The Best" has appeared in three episodes of the Emmy award-winning Netflix show Schitt's Creek. Season 4, Episode 1 "The Olive Branch": David lip-syncs to the original Tina Turner recording. Season 4, Episode 6 "Open Mic": Patrick performs an acoustic version of the song (arranged by actor Noah Reid). Season 6, Episode 13 (the series finale): the Jazzagals sing a capella at David and Patrick's wedding, causing "The Best" to become a popular wedding song in the LGBTQ community.
Three of Knight's songs, "The Best", "Better Be Good to Me", and "Be Tender with Me Baby," are featured in The Tina Turner Musical, which began previews at the Aldwych Theatre, in The West End in London, on March 21, 2018, and officially opened on April 17. In November 2019, the musical made its Broadway debut at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York. Tina Turner herself attended both premieres. In March 2019, the show opened at the Stage Operettenhaus in Hamburg, and on February 9, 2020 at the Beatrix Theater in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 2020, the musical received eleven Tony Award nominations.
"The Best" was featured at the end of Joe Biden's victory speech following his election to the presidency of the United States in 2021.
In November 2022, Knight released her memoir entitled, I Am The Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties. It was offered in a hardcover edition by Permuted Press, a Kindle edition, and an Audible audio book, which she narrated. The latter contains original demos of some of her biggest hits, including, "The Best", "Love Is a Battlefield" and "The Warrior". The book was listed on both Amazon and Audible as the #1 Hot New Release in Popular Music.
In 2023, during the Super Bowl, "The Best" also appeared in a Pringles commercial
In her spare time, Knight also does fine art photography.
She has been married three times, and dated Anton Fig and Paul Stanley in the 1980s.
Songs in theater productions
Discography
Studio albums
With Spider
With Device
Soundtrack appearances
Songs (credited as songwriter)
External links
Categories: Living People, Singers From New York City, Songwriters From New York, Mannes School Of Music Alumni, American Women Pop Singers, American Women Songwriters, American Pop Keyboardists, American Rock Keyboardists, American Pop Rock Musicians, Record Producers From New York, American Women Record Producers, 20th-century American Keyboardists, American Women Keyboardists, 20th-century American Women Musicians, 21st-century American Women, 1956 Births
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