El DeBarge
American R&B/soul singer-songwriter and record producer
Eldra "El" Patrick DeBarge (born June 4, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and musician.
He was the focal point and primary lead singer of the family group DeBarge. Popular songs led by El DeBarge include "Time Will Reveal", "Who's Holding Donna Now", "Stay with Me", "All This Love", and "Rhythm of the Night". As a solo artist, he is best known for his unique high tenor register, strong falsetto and hits like "Who's Johnny" and "Love Always". He has also collaborated with artists such as Dionne Warwick, Al Green, Lalah Hathaway, Tone Loc, Babyface, Faith Evans, Quincy Jones, Fourplay, and DJ Quik.
DeBarge is a five-time Grammy Award nominee. Eldra remains the only member of the DeBarges to have Grammy nominations both outside of the group and in the family. In 2023, Rolling Stone included Eldra on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. It described his voice as "lean and elastic, zooming into falsetto with apparent breath-taking ease. The ribbons of notes he lets loose during the finish of the group's 'All This Love' are like caramel; nearly three decades later, he sang the solo 'Second Chance' with such lithe grace that when his voice broke a little at the end, it took the listener with it."
Early life
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Eldra was the sixth of the children born to Robert Louis DeBarge Sr.
“El DeBarge” enters the record as american R&B/soul singer-songwriter and record producer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what DeBarge, American and soul can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“El DeBarge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, DeBarge, American and soul provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5351107. VIAF identifies the subject as 19873395. The Library of Congress control number is n92007025. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “El DeBarge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.