Sadenia "Eddi" Reader MBE (born 29 August 1959)[1] is a Scottish singer-songwriter, known for her work as the lead vocalist of the folk and soft rock band Fairground Attraction and for an enduring solo career.

Reader was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the daughter of a welder and the eldest of seven children;[2] her brother Francis is vocalist with the band Trashcan Sinatras, and her grandmother Sadie Smith was a leading Scottish footballer.

[4][5] She began playing the guitar at the age of ten, and started her musical career busking, first in Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street, then in the early 1980s in London and around Europe (where she also worked with circus and performance artists).

Around the same time, she met and asked Mark E. Nevin, a guitarist and songwriter from the band Jane Aire and the Belvederes to write for her and they recorded two songs as 'The Academy of Fine Popular Music'.

In November 1989, after a break, during which Reader had her first child, Charlie, with her French-Algerian partner Milou, arguments arose within the group, and Nevin abandoned a recording session for their second studio album, which eventually led to the break-up of the band.

In 2024, the band's original line-up announced a Japan and UK tour, and reunited for an album titled "Beautiful Happening", set for release on September 20th 2024.

She played Jolene Jowett, a singer and accordionist, in John Byrne's Your Cheatin' Heart, a comedy-drama series for BBC Television, set in the country music scene in Scotland.

Her other acting credits include playing the part of Joy 3 from the Michael Boyd (artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company) production of Janice Galloway's The Trick Is to Keep Breathing.

Returning to London, Reader worked on new material with a backing band calling itself the Patron Saints of Imperfection (made up of Roy Dodds, Neill and Calum MacColl, and Phil Steriopoulos).

[7] The managing director Rob Dickens executively produced her second solo studio album Eddi Reader (1994), which won her the "Best Female Singer" Brit Award that year, followed by Candyfloss and Medicine (1996), and Angels & Electricity (1998).

In 2003, she recorded her album of material by Robert Burns, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, leading to good reviews and an international resurgence in interest in Scotland's "bard".

"[12] She spent April 2006 touring Australia with Boo Hewerdine and Alan Kelly, following the release of St Clare's Night Out: Live at The Basement, with Australian acts such as David Hosking invited to open the concerts.

In 2009, she performed in period drama film Me and Orson Welles,[13] directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay and Claire Danes.

In a special arrangement with record label Rough Trade she sold an exclusive, pre-released and minimally-packaged version of the disc on her 19-date autumn 2008 UK tour.

Recorded from the sound desk at her Japan shows in September 2009, it was mastered and mixed by Mark Freegard who had worked on the Reader's ninth solo studio album Love Is the Way.

"[21] She issued a formal appeal to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), saying that: "The article was trying to portray ALL people wanting to have Scots running Scotland and independence voters as having links with the early Fascists.