She got her start after playing French horn at college and performed as a singer and actress in Minneapolis. She joined a short project that worked on Janis Joplin covers and she also worked as a talent scout for a time.
She got her big break in 1985 by doing vocals for the David Lynch film Blue Velvet with the song "Mysteries of Love". Written after Lynch's attempt to use This Mortal Coil's Cover Version of "Song to the Siren" was thwarted by licensing costs, the song became a prominent part of the film and gained attention to Cruise's abilities. This led to Blue Velvet's composer, Angelo Badalamenti, writing more songs for her to perform for future films. The resulting recordings ended up on her 1989 critically acclaimed album Floating Into The Night.
After this she started working with Lynch again for the music in his series, Twin Peaks. Several songs from Floating Into the Night featured in the series, sometimes with Cruise herself performing on-screen, and an instrumental version of "Falling" was used as the series' theme and won a Grammy for outstanding pop instrumental - Cruise herself missed out on a prize as she neither wrote nor performed on the instrumental, but her vocal version became a hit single in several countries. Around this time Cruise also toured with The B-52s while Cindy Wilson took a leave of absence from the band.
After working on more soundtrack songs, Cruise grew interested in writing and composing songs for herself. The resulting album, The Voice Of Love was released in 1992 once again to critical acclaim.
She spent the next few years working on soundtracks and taking breaks before going solo once again in 2002 titled The Art Of Being A Girl. Although not as acclaimed as her other work, it was strongly received and even met some pretty good sales. She also did some work acting and did some work as a backing vocalist for bands in Electronic Music.
It should also be noted that she was one of 3 major Dream Pop solo artists, including Lisa Germano and Heidi Berry. Compared to the former's Alternative Rock nature and the latter's Folk Rock nature, Cruise takes her music from more New Age and Jazz influences. Additionally, Cruise hasn't been somehow associated with the 4AD Records label. (Both Germano and Berry were signed to it in The '90s; Berry also contributed to This Mortal Coil's last album.)
In 2022, Cruise's husband Edward Grinnan announced that she had passed away from suicide, having struggled with systemic lupus and chronic pain in her final years.
Troping into the night:
- Something Something Leonard Bernstein: Notably averted by her cover of the Trope Namer "It's The End Of The World As We Know It", delivered in sufficiently clear and measured fashion that you can actually tell what the words are, even if they still don't make a lot of sense.
- With Lyrics: Her 1993 album The Voice Of Love includes a vocal version of "Kool Kat Walk", originally an instrumental from the 1990 Wild at Heart soundtrack.
