With the New Wave group The Motels, she achieved two No. 9 Billboard hits with "Only the Lonely" and "Suddenly Last Summer" in the early 1980s.
She wrote the song "Suddenly Last Summer" while reflecting on her life and "how you know summer is ending when you hear the ice cream truck go by for the last time and you know he won't be back for a while".
Lead singer and principal songwriter for the New Wave group The Motels from 1979-1984.
She appeared alongside actor Robert Carradine as her love interest in the music video "Suddenly Last Summer" with The Motels. One of her daughters (presumably Maria) also appeared in the music video as well.
Her oldest daughter Maria was found dead inside a Capitol Hill apartment in Seattle, Washington on May 30, 2016 from snorting cocaine mixed with fentanyl and her other daughter Patricia was married to Chris Matheson in 1988.