Fergie fits in between a diminishing trance scene and the radical advent of UK garage with an uncomplicated take on hard house ethics Beginning his DJ career at the age of 14 and taken through the clubland ranks with the help of Tony De Vit Fergie ma…

Britney Spears proved that the same goldmine that Madonna and Cyndi Lauper mined in the 1980s was again ripe for the picking, and she was immediately followed up the charts by another female teenybop sensation, Christina Aguilera. Closely aligned wit…

Young singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado, who hails from Victoria, BC, emerged seemingly from out of nowhere with her debut album WHOA NELLY in 2000, sporting an eclectic, genre-defying sound and winsome tone. Furtado's hugely popular work incorporates …

A discovery of pop-punk superstars Fall Out Boy, the Las Vegas emo band Panic! At the Disco (named for a Smiths song), stormed the charts in 2005 while its members were barely old enough to vote. Offering a highly danceable take on the emo formula of…

Denver-based band the Fray was formed in 2002 by Isaac Slade vocals piano and Joe King guitar vocals when the two former school friends met up again in a local music store They soon began regular two-man jam sessions that led to writing songs and dev…

Bursting on to the U.K. music scene seemingly out of nowhere in 2005, KT Tunstall is a Scottish singer-songwriter who blends the earthy pop sensibilities of Sheryl Crow with the darker leanings of Cat Power and Beth Orton. Her debut album, EYE TO THE…

Dallas-born Jessica Simpson started out as a heavily gospel-influenced teenage singer of contemporary Christian music, but before long her sheer starpower dictated a crossover to the secular world. In the late 1990s, Simpson became an enormously succ…

OK Go's popularity is testament not only to the Chicago band's crunchy-guitar, power-pop flammability--in evidence since their late-1990s beginnings--but also to the mixture of media canniness and of-the-moment grace that allowed them to ride a wave …

Born into wealth and the American equivalent of aristocracy Paris Hilton was the oldest of Kenneth Hilton and Kathy Richards four children and an heir to the familys hotel chain her great-grandfather Conrad Hilton was the founder Growing up in New Yo…

In 2002 one of the biggest stories in the music business was the ascendance of 17-year old Canadian singer Avril LaVigne. In an era dominated by pre-fabricated teen-pop, Avril was seen as a teen star with an edge. Instead of carefully crafted, studio…

Out of the backwaters of Oklahoma rose the power-pop clatter of the All-American Rejects, whose 2002 self-titled debut album, released on the indie Doghouse Records, yielded a huge fan base and the attention of several major labels. In a field crowde…

Singersongwriter Cheyenne Kimball wrote her first song at age eight but it was to get out of trouble Kimball had been sent to her room after making a mean remark to her older sister thus composing an apology of sorts entitled All I Want Is You The Te…

As the lead singer of California neo-ska pop-punks No Doubt, Gwen Stefani gained notoriety for her spunky, riot grrrl-lite approach to fronting a rock band. On her 2004 solo debut, LOVE. ANGEL. MUSIC. BABY., Stefani pulled a musical about-face and fu…

Ashlee Simpson, younger sister of singer Jessica Simpson, is one of the most fascinating pop-culture phenomena of the early 2000s. Following a stint on the squeaky-clean television drama "7th Heaven," the prefabricated sensation's singing career was …

Glasgow-via-Belfast indie-rock ensemble Snow Patrol have played everything from shambolic noise-pop a la Pavement, to a slightly droney post-rock in the vein of Mogwai, to epic lovelorn anthems modeled after Coldplay. While the band's influences are …

What started out as simply a campfire song between strangers soon turned into a musical connection in the form of the Columbus OH-based alternative poprock group Saving Jane It was at this bonfire that vocalist Marti Dodson then a junior at Ohio Stat…