Grace Jones (born Grace Beverly Jones on May 19, 1948, in Spanish Town, Jamaica) is a Jamaican singer, songwriter, model, and actress known for her bold androgynous style, deep contralto voice, avant-garde persona, and influential blend of genres including disco, new wave, reggae, art pop, and dance. She transitioned from modeling (in New York and Paris, frequenting Studio 54) to music in the mid-1970s and has maintained a career spanning decades.
Guided by producer Tom Moulton, her early albums Portfolio, Fame, and Muse embraced high-energy, orchestral disco strings and show tunes. She scored major club hits like “I Need a Man” and a dramatic, reinvented cover of Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.”
Jones radically abandoned standard disco to find her true voice, dropping into a deep, flat, monotone speak-singing style resembling a Jamaican art-form known as “chatting.” Collaborating with the legendary reggae rhythm section Sly & Robbie at Compass Point Studios, she delivered a dark, hypnotic fusion of post-punk, dub, and funk. This era yielded her masterwork albums, Warm Leatherette (1980) and Nightclubbing (1981).
Jones treats singing as part of a total audio-visual experience. Partnering with graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude, her album covers and surreal stage acts featured aggressive geometry, sharp suits, and gender-bending presentations. She brought an untamable, imperious energy to live television and concerts, infamously performing “Slave to the Rhythm” at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 while hula-hooping continuously for several minutes without breaking vocal pace.
Her uncompromising stance as a Black, queer-coded, and fiercely individualistic artist directly shaped generations of future pop icons, including Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Rihanna.
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