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Jill Sinclair (5 April 1952 – 22 March 2014) was a British businesswoman and record company director who co-founded ZTT Records. She has been described as one of the "most successful people in the British music business". She was married to the record producer Trevor Horn. She died of cancer in 2014, aged 61.
Sinclair started her career as a mathematics teacher, but started working full-time in Sarm Studios in 1977, at the age of 25. In 1978, Sarm Studios started a production company called Sarm Productions led by Sinclair, with records such as "Only Feel This Way" produced by her brother John Sinclair for his band Levinsky/Sinclair being one of their early productions.Levinsky/Sinclair: "Only Feel This Way" - produced by John Sinclair for Sarm Productions, engineered by Gary Langan (1979 The Famous Charisma Label, catalogue number: CB 327) The Kenny Everett Video Show as broadcast by That's TV Christmas on 20 November 2021, episode 3 of series 2 (Thames TV/Fremantle 1979) She also started as the manager of her husband Trevor Horn during the time the Buggles split. She convinced Horn to concentrate on music production, and arranged his first production deals with Dollar and ABC.
Sinclair and Horn founded Perfect Songs, a publishing company, in 1982. In the following year, together with NME writer Paul Morley, they founded ZTT Records which soon boomed into success. Sinclair became ZTT's managing director, while Paul Morley concentrated on marketing duties. In the same year Sinclair and Horn acquired Basing Street Studios from Island Records in exchange for distributing the ZTT label. The studio was renamed Sarm West Studios.
ZTT's first major signing was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, whose hits "Relax" and "Two Tribes" were among the most influential and best-selling singles of the decade. It was the label's second single, "Relax", that became the label's first number one in January 1984. "Relax" stayed in the Top 75 for a full year, and ZTT was well and truly established. During the 1980s, Grace Jones and Art of Noise were other ZTT acts to chart. In its early days the label also helped to shape the very structure and format of pop music (its 12" remixes getting chart positions of their own and its T-shirts becoming the uniform of the 1980s) and turned every aspect of the business of pop into entertainment.
In 1984, the Horn-Sinclair family businesses were reorganised as SPZ Group, which then consisted of Sarm Studios, Perfect Songs, and ZTT Records. The latter part of the decade was eclipsed by the bitter legal battle between ZTT and Holly Johnson, who fought his way out of a strict long-term recording contract. Similarly, in disagreement, a few other ZTT artists, like Art of Noise and Propaganda left the label.
Sinclair's brother John moved to Israel in 1987 to become a rabbi, and has not been involved in the Sinclair family's music business since the 1990s. A Foreigner fan in Mea She’arim In the same year, ZTT purchased the bankrupt Stiff Records. The spirit of Stiff Records lives on During this time ZTT refocused on the emerging dance music scene. Manchester group 808 State would reach the top 10 with their anthemic song "Pacific State" and three other singles and one album during the early 1990s. Seal was the next major ZTT act to emerge, in 1990.
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