Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart is an American singer-songwriter. She released five albums from 1996 to 2020, all of which reached the top 20 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. Apple has received numerous awards and nominations, including three Grammy Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, and a Billboard Music Award.
Eva Marie Cassidy was an American singer and musician known for her interpretations of jazz, folk, and blues music, sung with a powerful, emotive soprano voice. In 1992, she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by the 1996 live solo album titled Live at Blues Alley. Although she had been honored by the Washington Area Music Association, she was virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C., at the time of her death from melanoma at the age of 33 in 1996.
Sister Sledge is an American musical vocal group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formed in 1971, the group consisted of sisters Debbie, Joni, Kim, and Kathy Sledge. The siblings achieved international success at the height of the disco era. In 1979, they released their breakthrough album We Are Family, which peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and included the 1979 US top-10 singles "He's the Greatest Dancer" and "We Are Family". "We Are Family" earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
Joan Elizabeth Osborne is an American singer, songwriter, and interpreter of music, having recorded and performed in various popular American musical genres including rock, pop, soul, R&B, blues, and country. She is best known for her recording of the Eric Bazilian-penned song "One of Us" from her debut album, Relish (1995). Both the single and the album became worldwide hits and garnered a combined seven Grammy Award nominations. Osborne has toured with Motown sidemen the Funk Brothers and was featured in the documentary film about them, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002).
Norah Jones is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She has won several awards for her music and, as of 2023, had sold more than 50 million records worldwide. Billboard named her the top jazz artist of the 2000s decade. She has won nine Grammy Awards and was ranked 60th on Billboard magazine's artists of the 2000s decade chart.
Natalie Anne Merchant is an American singer-songwriter. She joined the band 10,000 Maniacs in 1981 and was lead vocalist and primary lyricist for the group. She remained with the group for their first seven albums before leaving to begin her solo career in 1993. She has since released nine studio albums as a solo artist.
Eve Jihan Cooper is an American rapper, singer, and actress from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her debut studio album, Let There Be Eve...Ruff Ryders' First Lady (1999) peaked atop the Billboard 200, received double platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and spawned the hit singles "What Ya Want", "Love Is Blind", and "Gotta Man". That same year, she guest featured on the Roots' Grammy Award-winning single "You Got Me", as well as Missy Elliott's single "Hot Boyz", both of which peaked within the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100.
Michelle Jacquet Branch is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. During the early 2000s, she released two top-selling albums: The Spirit Room and Hotel Paper. She won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals with Santana for their 2002 single, "The Game of Love".
Happy Rhodes is an American singer, musician, and songwriter with a four-octave vocal range, releasing 11 albums between 1986 and 2007.
Amy Jane Studt is an English singer, songwriter and musician. Growing up in a musical family, with her father a violinist and conductor who had toured with Roy Orbison, and her mother a pianist, Studt began writing music at the age of six, teaching herself piano, guitar, and oboe. At 12 years old she contracted the rare bone disease osteomyelitis in her hip, leaving her bedridden. Studt used this time for her hobbies, and two years later, with the advice of her father, she recorded her first two demo albums which would go on to get her signed to Polydor. Studt released her first single "Just a Little Girl" |in July 2002. It was followed almost a year later by "Misfit", which came to be her highest-charting single, reaching No. 6 in the UK charts. That same month, her debut album False Smiles was released, selling over 260,000 copies and being certified Gold. Two more singles were released, "Under the Thumb" in late 2003 and "All I Wanna Do" in early 2004, but only to diminishing sales that prompted Polydor to drop Studt in February 2004, all before her 18th birthday.
Lisa Jane Stansfield is an English singer, songwriter, and actress. Her career began in 1980 when she won the singing competition Search for a Star. After appearances in various television shows and releasing her first singles, Stansfield, along with Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, formed Blue Zone in 1983. The band released several singles and one album, but after the success of Coldcut's "People Hold On" in 1989, on which Stansfield was featured, the focus was placed on her solo career.
The Three Degrees are an African-American female vocal group formed circa 1963 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although 16 women have been members over the years, the group has always been a trio. The group were particularly successful in the UK, achieving 13 Top 50 hit singles between 1974 and 1985.
Anne Lilia Berge Strand, known professionally as Annie, is a Norwegian singer, songwriter, record producer and DJ. She began her recording career in 1999 with the underground hit single "The Greatest Hit" and gained international acclaim, particularly from music bloggers, for her debut album Anniemal (2004).
Kenneth Gamble and Leon A. Huff are an American songwriting and production duo credited for developing the Philadelphia soul music genre of the 1970s. In addition to forming their own label, Philadelphia International Records, Gamble and Huff have written and produced 175 gold and platinum records, earning them an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the non-performer category in March 2008.
Lisa Ruth Germano is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Indiana. Her album Geek the Girl (1994) was chosen as a top album of the 1990s by Spin magazine. She began her career as a violinist for John Mellencamp. As of 2018, she has released thirteen albums.
Bree Sharp is an American musician and actress. As of the 2010s, she is the lead vocalist of the electropop band Beautiful Small Machines.
Mildred Virginia Jackson is an American R&B and soul recording artist. Beginning her career in the early 1960s, three of Jackson's albums have been certified gold by the RIAA for over 500,000 copies sold. Jackson's songs often include long spoken sections, sometimes humorous, sometimes sexually explicit. According to the cataloguing site WhoSampled.com, her songs have appeared in 189 samples, 51 covers, and six remixes.
"Since she always enjoyed writing poems, in the early '70s Jackson began crafting such proto-rap R&B singles as the outspoken "A Child of God ."
Jean Carn, also spelled Jean Carne is an American R&B/soul and jazz Singer. In mid career, she added a final e to her name. Carn is a vocalist credited with a five octave vocal range.
Punk Rock Payroll is an American independent record label based in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The label was founded in 2003 by Frede Zimmer as a merchandise company, and houses Philadelphia artists The Extraordinaires, Lux Perpetua, Dangerous Ponies, The Armchairs, and Kill You in the Face.
Linda Elizabeth Hopper is the vocalist for the Atlanta, Georgia-based rock group Magnapop. Her pop punk/power pop vocal style helped to define the band's sound and she has co-written their minor hit singles "Slowly, Slowly" and "Open the Door". Prior to the formation of Magnapop, Hopper was a member of the Athens, Georgia music scene in the early 1980s, which included R.E.M., The B-52s, and her own band Oh-OK.
