Brenda Shannon Greene was born in Washington, D.C. in 1958. She grew up in Brooklyn and attended New York University, where she majored in accounting. When she was 20 years old, Shannon joined the New York Jazz Ensemble as a singer. During that time she met drummer Lenny White and sang with Brownstone, which resulted in some recording deals. In the fall of 1983, Emergency Records released "Let the music play", listing the artist as "Shannon". The song was produced by Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa and written by Barbosa and Ed Chisolm and it introduced a new dance sound. Brenda was shocked at the sight of her name on the record, but the track became a huge club hit and was picked up by Mirage Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, whose roster included dance-club favorites The System. Shannon got a record deal and released her debut album in February 1984.
The album included several singles, such as "Give me tonight" and "My heart's divided", but none became such a huge hit as "Let the music play". In May 1985, Shannon released her second album on Mirage, entitled "Do you wanna get away". Her third album was called "Love goes all the way". It was produced by Patrick Adams and Robbie Buchanan and released on Atlantic in October 1986. That album featured the singles "Dancin" and "Prove me right", but Shannon never managed to match the succes of her first release.
Several factors probably lead to Shannon's short-lived record career, including the closure of Emergency Records, some litigation surrounding her first single, the decline of dance-oriented radio stations and the loss of airtime of club-DJ remixes on mainstream stations, which had been the initial springboard to her success.
Shannon appeared again in 1999, on a segment of VH1's "Where are they now". She vowed to return to the top of the charts and in the Spring of 2000, she released the album "The best is yet to come".
D i s c o g r a p h y
| Give me tonight | 1984 | Emergency |
| Let the music play | 1984 | Bellaphon |
| My hearts divided | 1984 | Mirage |
| Do you wanna get away | 1985 | Emergency |
| Stronger together | 1985 | Club records |
| Dancin' | 1986 | Atlantic |
| Prove me right | 1986 | Atlantic |
| Love goes all the way | 1986 | Atlantic |
| The best is yet to come | 2000 | Master Dance Tones |