Karen Young (March 23, 1951 — January 26, 1991) was an American disco singer known for her 1978 hit song "Hot Shot".
Young grew up in a Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse. She began as a singer of jingles and backing vocalist for Philadelphia-based production companies. In the early 1970s, she performed with the group Sandd, featuring Frank Gilckin (lead guitar), George Emertz (rhythm guitar), Frank Ferraro (bass guitar) and Dennis Westman (drums).
In 1978, Young released the single "Hot Shot", written and produced by (Andy) Andrew Kahn and Kurt Borusiewicz. The song spent two weeks at number 1 on Billboard's disco chart and eventually peaked at number 67 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. An album, also titled Hot Shot, was then released by West End Records of New York City. The song propelled Young to international fame. With a powerful, soulful voice that invoked elements of Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand, Karen could tear through a song like a tornado," wrote a critic in Record World.
"Hot Shot" was featured in the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune and in the 2020 documentary The Times of Bill Cunningham. The song was a featured sample in Daft Punk's song "Indo Silver Club" on their album Homework. The song was also used by ITV in the mid-1980s during its coverage of the World Snooker Championship for "hot shots" compilations during the tournament. Hot Shot was covered by the pop band, Blondie and included as a bonus track on the Japan and South Africa editions of their comeback album, No Exit. Various remixes of the song were released in 2007. "Hot Shot" made three separate appearances in the UK Singles Chart in 1978, 1979, and 1997. The highest placing was number 34.
Producer Andy Kahn told in an interview that success made Karen 'unmanageable' and difficult to work with. A new recording Rendezvous With Me was attempted towards the end of 1979 but was never finished because the relationship ran sour. Instead Karen started working with his brother Walter Kahn. Signing with his Sunshine Recordings label, her first single was a rendition of God Bless America, an unlikely choice considering her disco fame, and unsurprisingly it was not a hit.
An album of pop/rock sides was shelved in favor of the dance track Dynamite, released late 1981, and seeing her have a modest disco hit when it reached #69 in the dance charts. Detour on Atlantic fared better at #34 in 1982, but none of the following singles, scattered on various labels, did particularly well. After 1987's double A-side Change In Me/Eye On You, she had no new recordings.After that, she was still a hot property, but the timing, or song or people, never quite worked. She tried different directions, but they led nowhere. In a business where the lights go out very soon after the song stops, Karen's time on the meter ran out. She was a dynamic piano player and, with her singing, created a large following for herself in the Greater Philadelphia area.
On Sept. 30 1990 Young performed at the Mandell Theater on the Drexel University campus. It was a benefit concert for Action AIDS. It was basically a jazz concert, but Karen and the song "Hot Shot" would forever be inseparable, and that is what she sang."It brought the audience down. Five hundred people went bananas, “said producer Andy Kahn.
Just two months before her 40th birthday, suffering from weight problems, she had trouble breathing and went to the hospital for a check-up, but she died on January 26, 1991, at her home in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania.The exact cause of her death still isn't known, but house mate and close friend Renee Koch, said a doctor called Karen's mother and said it might have been ruptured perforated ulcers that caused her death.
(Edited from Wikipedia, Bandcamp & The Inquirer Daily News)