Nancy Lamott

Nancy LaMott was born December 30, 1951, in Midland, MI, or as she termed it, a suburb of the Dow Chemical Corporation. Clearly a gifted musician, she learned music in public schools and started publicly singing with the big jazz dance band of her father, trumpeter Jack LaMott, in 1966 at age 15 while dreaming of a professional career. As a teenager she worked at the local Sears outlet. But in her late teens, Nancy developed Crohn's disease, a serious bowel disorder that often caused her to be hospitalized. Feeling a need to leave Michigan at the age of 19, she and her drummer/brother Brett left for San Francisco, CA. .

Norah Jones

She was born Geetali Norah Jones Shankar to legendary Indian musician, Ravi Shankar, and Sue Jones in New York City. Fittingly, her birth name, Geetali, carries the meaning of "song" or "melodious", and was bestowed on her by her father. No one could have possibly imagined how fully she would embody that name, even while circumstances removed her from the influences of her father's musical gifts.

Norah Jones was raised by her mother in a Dallas suburb, and that's where her musical talents began to reveal themselves. She performed in church choirs, learned to play the piano and guitar, and even briefly tried her hand at the alto saxophone. She attended Interlochen Arts Camp, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Texas, and the University of North Texas, where she majored in jazz piano, and won Best Student Music Awards for Best Jazz Vocalist (twice, in 1996 and 1997) and Best Original Composition (1996). At the age of sixteen, she officially shortened her name to Norah Jones, no longer carrying the Indian, "Geetali". Nonetheless, the "melodious song" was very much alive, and moving full-steam ahead.

Pat Benatar

Patricia Andrzejewski was born in Brooklyn and raised in suburban Lindenhurst, Long Island. Her mother Millie had sacrificed her own career as an opera singer to bring up Pat and son Andrew. Years later it was Pat who singing classical, honing the powers of her 4.5-octave voice as a member of Lindenhurst High's musical-theater department. Having been accepted at Juilliard, Pat shocked friends and family by marrying her high-school sweetheart Dennis T. Benatar, a soldier, and moving off to Virginia where he had been stationed.

Having thrilled the audience with her first performance on amateur night, Pat soon found herself with a paying gig, a manager and a recording contract, but her image was still in limbo. Primarily singing torch song and Judy Garland classics, she longed to perform hard-rocking tunes in the Led Zeppelin vein. Her wishes were fulfilled when her handlers introduced her to Cleveland guitar-man Neil Giraldo, whose aggressive playing unleashed Pat's inner rocker. She had found her muse, and when her audience roared one Halloween night over a sultry costume she wore on stage, she had found her image.

Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline, born Virginia Patterson Hensley, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s. Since her death in 1963 at age 30 in a private airplane crash at the height of her career, she has been considered one of the most influential, successful, and acclaimed female vocalists of the 20th century.

Cline was best known for her rich tone and emotionally expressive bold contralto voice, which, along with her role as a mover and shaker in the country music industry, has been cited as an inspiration by many vocalists of various music genres. Her life and career have been the subject of numerous books, movies, documentaries, articles and stage plays.

Her hits included "Walkin' After Midnight", "I Fall to Pieces", "She's Got You", "Crazy", and "Sweet Dreams". Posthumously, millions of her albums have sold over the past 50 years. She has been given numerous awards, which have given her an iconic status with some fans similar to that of legends Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Ten years after her death, she became the first female solo artist inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Peggy Lee

As a blues-influenced jazz singer, Lee's restrained yet soulful subdued singing style has been compared to Billie Holiday. Her long singing career virtually encompassed the history of American popular music between 1940 and 1970. In addition, she acted in films and revealed herself to be an accomplished songwriter.

Born on a farm, Lee sang with the Four of Us in small clubs in the Midwest and California before being discovered by Benny Goodman in Chicago in 1941 and joining his band as replacement for Helen Forrest. Her first recordings with Goodman, including Irving Berlin's "How Deep Is the Ocean" (Columbia, 1941), were merely competent, but her 1942 recording of "Why Don't You Do Right?" revealed an individual style.

Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 - June 29, 2002) was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the novelty hit "Come On-a My House" written by William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian (David Seville), which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me" (a cover version of the Italian song Ba-Ba-Baciami Piccina by Alberto Rabagliati), "Mambo Italiano", "Tenderly", "Half as Much", "Hey There" and "This Ole House", though she would go on to success as a jazz vocalist.

Clooney's career languished in the 1960s, partly due to problems related to depression and drug addiction, but revived in 1974, when her White Christmas co-star Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business. She continued recording until her death in 2002. She is the aunt of Academy Award winning actor George Clooney.

Sara Bareilles

1979, she was raised as a Catholic and participated in high school choir as well as local community theater musical productions when she was young. During her time in UCLA, she joined a capella group named Awaken a Cappella and won twice in the annual student concert, UCLA Spring Sing.

Post graduating from the college, she performed at local bars and clubs in an attempt to build a fanbase for a bigger show. She issued two demos, sang in an indie film and self-released an album. Eager to go back to the studio and create a second full-length album, she started shopping her CD around and finally sealed a deal with Epic Records in 2005.

Three years after her debut, Bareilles dropped a sophomore set "Little Voice". Despite the title, the album was a big one. It led her claiming her fame as it shot to No. 1 on the list of most downloaded album in iTunes music store and reached No. 7 on Billboard Hot 200. Its first single "Love Song", meanwhile, peaked at No. 4 on Hot 100.

Sarah McLachlan

Sarah McLachlan was adopted in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As a child, she took voice lessons, along with studies in classical piano and guitar. When she was 17 years old, and still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School, she fronted a short-lived rock band called The October Game. One of the band's songs, "Grind", credited as a group composition, can be found on the independent Flamingo Records release 'Out of the Fog' and the CD Out of the Fog Too. It has yet to be released elsewhere. Her high school yearbook predicted that she was "destined to become a famous rock star."

Following The October Game's first concert at Dalhousie University opening for Moev, McLachlan was offered a recording contract with Vancouver-based independent record label Nettwerk by Moev's Mark Jowett. McLachlan's parents insisted she finish high school and complete one year of studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver and embarking on a new life as a recording artist, and McLachlan finally signed to Nettwerk two years later before having written a single song.

Sarah Vaughan

Vaughan was the daughter of amateur musicians. She began studying piano and organ at age seven and sang in the church choir. After winning an amateur contest at Harlem's famed Apollo Theatre in 1942, she was hired as a singer and second pianist by the Earl Hines Orchestra. A year later she joined the singer Billy Eckstine's band, where she met Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Vaughan's singing style was influenced by their instruments-"I always wanted to imitate the horns." Gillespie, Parker, and Vaughan recorded "Lover Man" together in 1945.

Shania Twain

Shania Twain was born Eileen Edwards, on August 28, 1965, in Ontario, Canada. She was raised in the small mining town of Timmins, Ontario, by her mother, Sharon, and stepfather, an Ojibway Indian named Gerald Twain. (She later changed her name from Eileen to "Shania"; an Ojibway word meaning "I'm on my way").

Twain was already singing and writing songs by age 10; as a teenager, she performed on Canadian television. In 1987, her mother and stepfather were tragically killed in a car accident, leaving Twain to care for her three younger siblings.

With the help of Lange, Twain released The Woman in Me in 1995, which sold 12 million copies, becoming the bestselling country album by a female artist in history. The album, which yielded the hit songs "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" "Any Man of Mine," and "(If You're Not in It for Love) I'm Outta Here!" earned Twain a Grammy Award for Best Country Album.

Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Suzanne Crow is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and actress. Her music incorporates elements of rock, folk, hip hop, country and pop. She has won nine Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

She has performed with The Rolling Stones and has sung duets with Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Luciano Pavarotti, John Mellencamp, Kid Rock, Michelle Branch, and Sting among others. She has performed backing vocals for Tina Turner, Don Henley and Belinda Carlisle, on her 1991 hit Little Black Book. Crow has released seven studio albums, two compilations, and a live album, and has contributed to film soundtracks. She has sold 16 million albums in the United States and 35 million albums worldwide and her newest album, 100 Miles from Memphis, was released on July 20, 2010. Recently she appeared on NBC's 30 Rock, ABC's Cougar Town, Disney Channel's Hannah Montana Forever and Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

Susan Boyle

Susan Magdalane Boyle is a Scottish singer who came to international public attention when she appeared as a contestant on the TV programme Britain's Got Talent on 11 April 2009, singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables. Her first album was released in November 2009 and debuted as the number one best-selling album on charts around the globe.

Susan Boyle's initial appearance on the talent show fired public imagination when her modest stage introduction and thick speaking accent left audience, viewers and judges alike unprepared for the power and expression of her mezzo-soprano voice. Before she had finished the song's opening phrase a standing ovation for Boyle had erupted. An international media and Internet response coincided. Within nine days of the audition, videos of Boyle - from the show, various interviews and her 1999 rendition of "Cry Me a River" - had been watched over 100 million times. Despite becoming an international sensation she eventually finished in second place on the show behind dance troupe Diversity.

Taylor Swift

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. One of the leading contemporary recording artists, she is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. As a songwriter, Swift has received awards from the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and was included in Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015. She is also the recipient of 10 Grammy Awards, five Guinness World Records, one Emmy Award, 21 Billboard Music Awards, 11 Country Music Association Awards, eight Academy of Country Music Awards, and one Brit Award.

Tracy Chapman

Tracy Chapman helped restore singer/songwriters to the spotlight in the '80s. The multi-platinum success of Chapman's eponymous 1988 debut was unexpected, and it had lasting impact. Although Chapman was working from the same confessional singer/songwriter foundation that had been popularized in the '70s, her songs were fresh and powerful, driven by simple melodies and affecting lyrics. At the time of her first album, there were only a handful of artists performing such a style successfully, and her success ushered in a new era of singer/songwriters that lasted well into the '90s. Furthermore, her album helped usher in the era of political correctness -- along with 10,000 Maniacs and R.E.M., Chapman's liberal politics proved enormously influential on American college campuses in the late '80s. Of course, such implications meant that Chapman's subsequent recordings were greeted with mixed reactions, but after several years out of the spotlight, she managed to make a very successful comeback in 1996 with her fourth album, New Beginning, thanks to the Top Ten single "Give Me One Reason."

Whitney Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all-time.[1] Houston is one of the best-selling music artists of all-time, with 200 million records sold worldwide.[2][3] She released seven studio albums and two soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum, or gold certification. Houston's crossover appeal on the popular music charts, as well as her prominence on MTV, starting with her video for "How Will I Know", influenced several African American women artists who follow in her footsteps.

Houston made her screen acting debut as Rachel Marron in the romantic thriller film The Bodyguard (1992). She performed the lead single from the film's original soundtrack, "I Will Always Love You", which received the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became the best-selling single by a woman in music history. With the soundtrack, which received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1994. Houston made other high-profile film appearances and contributed to their soundtracks, including Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher's Wife (1996). The latter's soundtrack became the best-selling gospel album in history.