Crystal Waters is an American house and dance music singer and songwriter, best known for her 1990s dance hits “Gypsy Woman” and “100% Pure Love”. All three of her studio albums produced a Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as one most successful dance artist of all-time. Her accolades include 6 ASCAP Songwriter Awards, three American Music Award nominations, an MTV Video Music Award nod and four Billboard Music Awards.
Waters first approached the music world in 1989 as a behind-the-scenes worker, writing demos for a production team known as the Basement Boys, securing a writing contract with Mercury Records in 1989 and began penning songs for recording artists.
In one of her assignments Waters penned a song called “Gypsy Woman” for dance artist Ultra Naté and recorded a demo herself of the song. The producers were so taken by her rendition that they drew up a recording contract with her for the song, never passing it on to Ultra Naté.
The song became a worldwide hit, memorable for its “la da dee, la dee da” refrain and its often sampled keyboard riff. The track reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and found more success in Europe, reaching number 2 on the UK Singles Chart, and number 1 in the Netherlands and Switzerland. A year after its release, a new version was featured on the Red Hot Organization’s Red Hot + Dance AIDS fundraiser disc (1992, distributed by Sony Music), gaining remixer Joey Negro his first American exposure.
Her next single Makin Happy had contributions by remixer Steve “Silk” Hurley, which shot quickly to #1 on the Billboard Dance Chart. In 1994 on her follow up album “Storyteller” she made a mainstream comeback with song “100% Pure Love” hit number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 #1 on the Billboard Dance Chart and became one of the longest-charting singles on the Hot 100 at 45 weeks (“Gypsy Woman” remained on the chart for an average 16 weeks). Along with the single, her second album Storyteller, sold over 1,000,000 copies in the United States.