Actors - Emma Bunton

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	Actors - Emma Bunton

{{Infobox_band | band_name = Emma Bunton | image = | | caption = Promotional picture from her second album Free Me. | origin = Barnet, North London, England | years_active = 1996–present | music_genre = Pop | record_label = Virgin (1996–2001)
19 (2004–present} }}

Emma Lee Bunton (born January 21, 1976) is an English pop singer, originally in the girl band the Spice Girls, where she was known as "Baby Spice" (their youngest member).

Childhood and beginning

Bunton was born to parents Pauline, a karate instructor, and Trevor, a milkman, with one sibling, a younger brother. Her parents split up when she was eleven, and she stayed with her mother. Bunton grew up in the north London suburb of Woodside Park.

She attended St Theresa's Roman Catholic Primary School in Finchley, and then went on to go to the Dame Sylvia Young Drama School in London.

She has been linked with such stars as Nigel Harman, Fran Cosgrave and 911 lead singer Lee Brennan. She is currently dating Damage lead singer Jade Jones, who also appeared on the Channel 4 reality television show The Games in March 2006.

She appeared in The Bill in 1993.

Music career

Spice Girls

She joined the Spice Girls in 1994 after the original fifth Spice Girl, Michelle Stephenson, left the group. The group became one of the most successful musical artists of the 1990s selling over forty million albums with the studio releases Spice, Spiceworld and Forever. Their debut single "Wannabe" became the first of a string of number-ones in the United Kingdom (nine in total) and reached the top position in thirty-seven countries around the globe, including Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Other successful releases followed including "Say You'll Be There" and "2 Become 1" from Spice, and "Spice Up Your Life", "Too Much", "Stop" and "Viva Forever" from Spiceworld and "Goodbye", "Holler" and "Let Love Lead the Way" from Forever. . The Spice Girls stopped recording in 2000.

A Girl Like Me

Her first solo album entitled A Girl Like Me (2001) spawned the number one hit "What Took You So Long?", top five hits "What I Am" and "Take My Breath Away" (which was not a cover of the Berlin hit) and top twenty hit "We're Not Gonna Sleep Tonight". The album sold around 125,000 in the UK but this was not sufficient for her record company, who dropped her. She also recorded the track "(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind" for Pokémon: The First Movie (1999).

Free Me

However she soon recovered from being dropped, and signed a contract with Spice Girls svengali Simon Fuller's 19 Management which included TV work and releasing music. In spring 2003 she returned as Emma (losing the Bunton), with the top five hit "Free Me" and later that year released "Maybe" which also went top ten and outsold the previous single. In spring 2004 the single "I'll Be There" and the album Free Me were released. The album contained 60s style pop gems and went on to outsell her first album, something other solo Spice Girls have yet to achieve.

In the run-up to the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest, rumours circulated that Emma was being lined up as a rare big-name representative for the UK, in an attempt to wipe away the national humiliation of the 'nul points' achieved by the previous year's inexperienced entrants Jemini. This didn't materialise, but the fact that she ended up performing the interval act in the UK's Eurovision pre-selection show Making Your Mind Up suggested there may have been a glimmer of truth in the rumours at some stage. The performance gave her another outlet to indulge her passion for 60s pop - she started with a nostalgic burst of the UK's winning song from the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest, Sandie Shaw's "Puppet on a String", which then melted into her own hit "Maybe".

The album Free Me was released in the United States on January 25, 2005 but failed to make the Billboard 200 albums. The first single in the U.S. is a dance remix of the title track, which reached the top five of both the Dance Airplay chart and the Club Play chart. "Maybe" also followed "Free Me"'s success in the U.S. Dance charts.

She is currently working on her third studio album.

Discography

Studio albums

Singles

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