KEMP
Shirlie

• 1. Music career

Shirlie Kemp is an English singer, who found fame in the 1980s with Wham! and as part of the duo Pepsi & Shirlie.

Music career

Holliman was never a band member of what became Wham! but, like her friend Dee C. Lee, was paid on a per performance basis as a backing singer, and continued to live with her parents. After Lee left to join the Style Council and later date its lead singer Paul Weller, she was replaced by "Pepsi" DeMacque, and this duo performed on all the Wham! songs and concerts. As George Michael desired to create music targeted to a more sophisticated audience than Wham!'s primarily teenage fan base, the announcement of Wham!'s break-up was made in the spring of 1986, with a grand finale concert at Wembley Stadium on 28 June 1986, called 'The Final'.

During their Wham! career, Holliman and DeMacque decided to form their own act, named Pepsi & Shirlie. Created immediately after the Wembley concert with an upbeat and more pop genre sound, they had two UK top 10 hits: "Heartache", which was produced by Phil Fearon and Tambi Fernando, reaching #2 on the UK Singles Chart behind the #1 hit of George Michael and Aretha Franklin's "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)", and "Goodbye Stranger", produced by Tambi Fernando and Pete Hammond, which reached #9.

The duo with DeMacque went on hiatus in 1989, but briefly returned in 2000 to record backing vocals on the UK number one Geri Halliwell hit "Bag It Up". The duo also re-united to perform for the 'Here and Now 10th Anniversary tour' which began on 24 June 2011.

On 29 November 2002, Holliman was a back-up vocalist in the Concert for George, a concert celebrating the music of the late George Harrison.

In November 2019, Holliman and her husband released their first album together as Martin & Shirlie, titled In the Swing of It via Sony Music. The album contains duet covers of classic jazz standards plus two original songs written by their daughter Harley Moon Kemp.

In January 2023, Holliman appeared alongside her husband Martin Kemp on the fourth series of The Masked Singer as "Cat & Mouse".