Billy Ocean (born Leslie Sebastian Charles, 21 January 1950, Fyzabad, Trinidad blank">All Music Guide biography - accessed January 2008 ) is a _UK-based popular music performer who had a string of rhythm and blues-tinged international pop hits in the 1970s and 1980s. He was the top British-based R&B singer / songwriter of the 1980s. He waited seven years after scoring his first four UK top 20 hits, before accumulating an impressive run of transatlantic successes, including three U.S. number ones.

Leslie Sebastian Charles, aka Billy Ocean, was born in Fyzabad, Trinidad and Tobago and moved to England with his family at the age of eight. In his teenage years, he sang regularly in London clubs. He released his first single in 1972 on Spark Records as Les Charles. By 1976 he had adopted the name Billy Ocean and recorded his debut album, Billy Ocean, with the first single, “Love Really Hurts Without You,” charting at number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 22 in the United States. More