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…

As the very first winner of the AMERICAN IDOL television show competition, Kelly Clarkson was inevitably pegged as little more than a manufactured pop commodity. The surprisingly versatile singer managed to survive against expectations, however, and …

b. 16 August 1980, Mitford, Pennsylvania, USA. Carlton was brought up in a musical family, with her pianist mother instilling in her daughter a love of classical music. Vanessa began playing piano at an early age, and was soon highly proficient, comp…

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 …

The roots of Los Angeles band Maroon 5 lay in the late-1990s Weezer-influenced alt-rock outfit Kara's Flowers. After that group disbanded, the members eventually started a new band (along with a second guitarist). Rechristening themselves Maroon 5, t…

Hilary Duff, along with her one-time rival Lindsay Lohan, is a product of the Disney idol machine and the star of the long-running LIZZIE MCGUIRE television series. Duff's image has gone from squeaky-clean teenybopper to slightly vampy teenybopper si…

In the late 1990s, Madonna had long since become a mature artist, turning her back on the carefree dance-pop of her early days ("Like A Virgin," "Holiday," etc.). Teenage singer Britney Spears picked up on this specific Madonna era, albeit with a mor…

b. 18 July 1982, Dallas, Texas, USA. Pop rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Cabrera dropped out of a course at the University of Texas to concentrate on music. He had previously played in punk bands but switched direction as a member of the Dallas-…

Of all the teen queens of the early 2000s, Lindsay Lohan seems to be both the most troubled (drug rumors, family strife, and the like) and the most likely to succeed, as her film and recording careers have slowly moved beyond bubblegum boundaries. Wh…

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…

John Mayer emerged in 2001 as the fresh young face for a new generation of earnest singer-songwriters. While Mayer's work is as confessional, intimate, and acoustic-guitar-based as that of old-schoolers like James Taylor and Jackson Browne, his appro…

The punk pop craze continued to sweep across US shopping malls and MTV during the early twenty-first century, owing to the emergence of acts such as Montreal, Quebec, Canada-based Simple Plan. Following in the footsteps of fellow Canadians Sum 41, Si…

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…

The angst-ridden alt-rock that bands like Nirvana popularized in the early-1990s eventually branched off into a softer, more mature sound with such groups as the Goo Goo Dolls. Although they began as raw and rowdy Replacements-style rockers in the la…

This Los Angeles, California, USA-based alternative rock band treads the same middle ground as Creed, Matchbox 20 and Pearl Jam. Songwriter Jason Wade (b. 5 July 1980, California, USA; vocals/guitar) and Sergio Andrade (b. 17 October 1977, Guatemala …

b. USA. Viewed in many quarters as an Elton John for the twenty-first century, this pop rock singer-songwriter made his much-hyped entrance on the US music scene in 2003 with his debut, Chariot. DeGraw grew up in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New…

Liz Phair burst onto the indie rock scene in 1993, riding a wave of hype and acclaim that heralded her Matador Records debut, EXILE IN GUYVILLE. Conceived as a song-for-song response to the Rolling Stones' EXILE ON MAIN STREET, GUYVILLE boasted cleve…

Part Cyndi Lauper and part Madness, No Doubt came out of nowhere in 1995 and exploded on the alt-rock scene with their special brand of mainstream ska-rock. While the focal point of the group was unmistakably the sexy and hyperactive singer Gwen Stef…

Coming out of the grass-roots Gilman St. punk scene of the early-1990s Bay Area, Green Day exploded into the mainstream with their third album, 1994's DOOKIE. The trio's punk energy and pop hooks, influenced by first-generation punks like the Buzzcoc…

A soulful and poppy sensation from the U.K., Natasha Bedingfield outdid her older brother Daniel's pop success when her debut album went triple platinum in her homeland, and her single "These Words" became a huge charter in the U.S. Born into a music…