Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, (, born 9 December 1950) is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist.

A three-time Grammy Award nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996.

In a recording career spanning nearly 50 years, Armatrading has released 19 studio albums, as well as several live albums and compilations.

Early life

Joan Armatrading, the third of six children, was born in 1950 in the town of Basseterre on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts. Her father was a carpenter and her mother a housewife. When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham in England, sending Joan to live with her grandmother on the Caribbean island of Antigua. In early 1958, at the age of seven, she joined her parents in …Read more on Wikipedia