[2] In addition to performing jazz, soul and blues music, she appeared alongside Ranee Lee and Anthony Sherwood in a 1986 production of Ain't Misbehavin'.

[3] She formed her own group, Michelle Sweeney's Good News Singers, in 1987, and released her first recorded single, "Our Love", that year.

[4] In 1988, she appeared on Quebec television alongside Céline Dion and Johanne Blouin, performing a medley of "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" from the musical Hair with "Quand on arrive en ville" from the musical Starmania, which saw Sweeney widely labelled as the star performer of the show.

[2] In 1989 she starred in a production of the jazz revue Eubie!,[5] and the following year she appeared as a tour guide in the docufiction film The Company of Strangers.

[9] In 2020 Sweeney premiered her own original one-woman show Her Songs, My Story, in which she blends performances of the music of Aretha Franklin with personal reminiscences of her own life, including the revelation that she suffered for many years as a victim of domestic abuse in her prior marriage.