Leo Sayer

In the early 1970s, singer-songwriter Leo Sayer enjoyed a stellar run on the charts in both his native England and the United States with such upbeat pop-R&B hybrids as "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," "When I Need You" and "More Than I Can Say." With his songwriting partner, musician David Courtney, and the patronage of manager and ex-pop star Adam Faith, Sayer enjoyed seven straight Top 10 singles on the U.K. chart, beginning in 1973 with "The Show Must Go On" and concluding with 1977's "How Much Love." Between these hits, he generated two No. 1 hits in America with "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," which reaped a Grammy for Best R&B song, and the ballad "When I Need You," which topped the charts in 1976 and 1977, respectively. His tenure at the top of the music scene, however, proved short-lived; by 1978, his brand of highly theatrical, polished pop had been supplanted in both American and the U.K. by disco, New Wave and straightforward rock-n-roll, among other things. Sayer would sit out most of the ensuing two decades while continuing to draw huge crowds around the world, most notably in Australia, where he maintained his status as a pop idol well into the new millennium. His participation in remixes of "Dancing" and the 1977 single "Thunder in My Heart" in 1998 and 2006 revived interest in his career in England, underscoring his knack for producing some of the most enduring pop material of the 1970s.