Imogen Heap is an English singer-songwriter and composer. Best known for her work as part of the musical duo Frou Frou and her solo albums, she writes, produces and mixes all of her music.
Heap’s debut album iMegaphone (an anagram of her name) was released in 1998 before her 2002 collaboration with Guy Sigsworth on the Frou Frou album Details. She returned to her solo career in 2005 with the self-produced Speak for Yourself carrying her perhaps most well known hits “Headlock”, “Goodnight and Go”, and the infamous “Hide and Seek (Whatcha Say)”.
After refurbishing her family home – including the installation of a studio in her old playroom – Heap released third album Ellipse. It was a North American chart success that earned Heap two Grammy nominations, winning Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical in recognition of her technical and engineering work on the record. In 2010 she also received the British Academy’s Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement.
However, the cycle of “go into the studio for just over a year, don’t talk to anyone, release a record, tour and do it all over again” was beginning to have a detrimental effect on Heap and so she began to stray from this format with fourth album Sparks. Originally releasing a new song every 2 months with an accompanying video, the album took Heap almost all around the work to compose its 14 tracks. The eventual release was delayed many times, but the album made it out in time to accompany the Reverb 2014 festival which Heap curated at the London Roundhouse.
In 2014 Heap had daughter Florence Scout Rosie Heap-Lebor which deterred her from touring in support of Sparks. This time away from the industry resulted in the production of single “Tiny Human” in 2015 in combination with Heap’s mission to improve the music industry through blockchain technology. Heap’s most recent release, “The Happy Song”, is also inspired by her daughter.
Most recently towards the end of 2016, Heap posted a blog about going “underground” where she gave details of her plans for the future including both tour and preference for fixing the music industry as opposed to releasing records.