40 And Fabulous: Soul Sisters
They’ve crooned and cried, warbled and wailed their way into our hearts. in celebration of w’s 40th anniversary, we look back at the divine divas who HAVE graced our pages. Click here to purchase *W: The First Forty Years*.
1
Barefoot and eight months pregnant, the singer expounded on her performance as Billie Holiday in the film Lady Sings the Blues: “Some people said I could never do her right. I reacted to that challenge.”
2
At the beginning of their career, the four siblings (from left: Ruth, June, Bonnie, and Anita) favored a forties look. “We always liked to be different,” Ruth said.
3
The folksinger had just released the album Spy when she posed straddling the diving board of her pool on Martha’s Vineyard. “To work well, you have to be healthy of mind and body,” she said.
4
Emerging from more than a decade of domestic hibernation, the rocker celebrated her comeback with a shoot at Brooklyn’s Coney Island.
5
Pre–Jenny Craig, the songbird was shot for the release of Rainbow, her seventh studio album, flaunting more than just her musical prowess.
6
Just seven months after a riding accident, the then 47-year-old pop star got back on the horse, so to speak, for an epic portfolio by Steven Klein.
7
Despite an acrimonious divorce from René Elizondo, her secret husband of nine years, and a drawn-out lawsuit for a certain wardrobe malfunction, Miss Jackson appeared in the magazine in rather magnificent form.
8
“The mic was my therapist,” said the pop star upon returning to the spotlight a year after her abusive relationship with ex Chris Brown became public.
9
If Jay-Z’s lyrics are accurate, the couple’s baby, Blue Ivy, was conceived just a week after we photographed her mama doing acrobatics.
