Foreign Artist

Britney Spears

• Britney Spears was born on December 2, 1981 in Kentwood, Louisiana to parents Lynn Bridges (Woolemore) and Jamie Parnell Spears. She has a younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears who is the star of Nickelodeon's Zoey 101. She also has a brother Bryan.

• She began singing and performing at a very early age and appeared on the TV show Star Search at age 8.

• In 1993 and 1994, she appeared on Disney's The New Mickey Mouse Show, a variety show for kids with other future pop-stars such as Christina Aguillera and Justin Timberlake .

• Her big break came in 1998 when she released her debut song "Baby One More Time" and it was a instant hit. She followed up with her debut album of the same name the following year to even greater success. It shot up to number one on the Billboard charts. She received two Grammy nominations for this album - Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for "Baby One More Time")

• Her next album, released the following year, Oops, I Did It Again was another smash pushing her to the top of the pop-diva list. She received another two Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Vocal Performance.

• In November of 2001, she tried to shed some of her innocence with her next album, the self-titled Britney and videos showing an older and sexier Britney. In 2001, she also co-hosted the American Music Awards with LL Cool J and signed a multi-million dollar endorsement deal with Pepsi. The Britney album gave her two more Grammy nominations for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for "Overprotected) and Pest Pop Album (for Britney). Once again a Grammy was not in her stars.

• She co-authored a book in 2001 with her mother Lynne entitled Britney Spears's Heart-to-Heart.

• Her movie debut came in 2002, with her role in Crossroads. The movie tanked in the theaters. However, she was nominated for the MTV Movie Awards for Best Dressed and Breakthrough Female Performance as well as Teen Choice Award nominations for Film - Choice Actress, Drama/Action Adventure and Film - Choice Chemistry (shared with Anson Mount).

• Even though her movie career did not start out well, she always has her music, and in 2003, her next album In the Zone was another chart topping success. [Note: she co-wrote 8 of the songs on the album.] She opened up a trend New York restaurant in July 2002 named "Nyla." It has a Louisiana type theme and atmosphere.

• She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in November of 2003.

• In 2003, she wrote a sequel to the Heart to Heart book entitled A Mother's Gift.

• She was briefly married in January 2004 (approximately 2 1/2 days) to childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander (no, not the guy from Seinfeld) as a spoof.

• She got married to Kevin Federline in September 2004, which at first seemed only to be a media stunt - but was for real. She later admitted that it was her who proposed to Fenderline.

• In February 2005, she won her first Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording (for "Toxic") from the album In The Zone. She also won a BMI Cable Award for writing the theme song from the TV show Zoey 101 (shared w/ Michael Corcoran). In addition she was also nominated for the 2005 Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Personality: Female.

• In April 2005 she announced that she is pregnant and will be having their first baby. The baby is due sometime in September. Federline already has two children with actress Shar Jackson - Kori (b. 2002) and Kaleb (b. 2004).

• She has her own line of perfume called "Curious" that she began selling in September 2004 and has sold millions of dollars worth of merchandise since its launch. She will be following this up with a new fragrance called "Fantasy" that will be on the shelves in September 2005.

• In November 2004 she released her Greatest Hits: My Perogative albums, and just like everything else she has leant her voice to, has done very well in sales.

• 2005 has been a busy year for Britney while everything is going on, she has let the cameras follower her around in her own reality TV show entitled Britney & Kevin: Chaotic - which mostly showed home videos taken by herself and Federline. [Note: The DVD of the show will be available for sale in September 2005]

• It has been reported that Britney has given birth to a baby boy on September 14th, 2005! They have named the baby Sean Preston. She has given birth to her second child almost exactly a year later on Sept. 11, 2006, and has confirmed that the name of the second child is Jayden James Federline.

• In February 2007, Britney shaves her head, goes into rehab, then goes home within a day. By the end of February she attached some photographers and their cars with her umbrella, and later that evening her mother drove her to Malibu's Promises rehabilitation facility. She has had the strong support of Kevin Federline during this time when she needs it most. She has only left the facility to go to an AA meeting and is hopefully on her way to recovery.

Madonna

• Born: 16 August 1958
• Birthplace: Bay City, Michigan
• Best Known As: Pop superstar singer of "Like a Virgin"

Name at birth: Madonna Louise Ciccone

Madonna used a mixture of talent, pulchritude and relentless self-promotion to become one of the most famous recording artists of the 20th century. She released her self-titled first album in 1983 in the guise of a streetwise pop ragamuffin, and over time she kept one step ahead of the game by jumping from persona to persona: dance club queen, balladeer, cowgirl, channeler of the Mysterious East. Her other albums have included Like a Virgin (1984), Ray of Light (1998, Music (2000), American Life (2003) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005). She has also acted in over a dozen movies, including Dick Tracy (1990, with Warren Beatty) and A League of Their Own (1992, with Rosie O'Donnell). No stranger to controversy, Madonna has long been a favorite of the tabloids on topics ranging from her racy videos and TV appearances to her sometimes-mystical religious beliefs to her marriages to actor Sean Penn (1985-89) and filmmaker Guy Ritchie (2000-present). Her daughter Lourdes was born in October of 1996, fathered by Madonna's personal trainer, Carlos Leon. In August of 2000 Madonna and Ritchie had a son, Rocco. In October of 2006 they adopted a a motherless 13-month-old child, David Banda, from the African country of Malawi.

Madonna attended the University of Michigan on a dance scholarship... Her daughter Lourdes is named for the site where Bernadette Soubirous saw visions of the Virgin Mary... A fall from a horse in 2005 left the pop star with a broken collarbone and three cracked ribs.

Vanessa Williams

Born: 18 March 1963

Birthplace: Millwood, New York

Best known as: The first African-American to become Miss America

Blue-eyed, sultry Vanessa Williams was the first African-American to win the Miss America crown (1983). She was forced to turn in her tiara after Penthouse magazine published nude photos of her, but she bounced back with a successful career as a singer, starting with the 1988 dance-pop album The Right Stuff. The 1990s saw Williams branch out into Broadway and make a respectable go at the movies, playing semi-tough babes opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Eraser (1996) and Samuel L. Jackson in Shaft (2000). In 1999 she married NBA player Rick Fox. Her albums include The Comfort Zone (1991) and Everlasting Love (2005).

Extra credit: Williams attended Syracuse University... She is no relation to Vanessa Williams, the actress with the same name who appeared on the TV show Melrose Place. By coincidence, the former Miss America starred in the movie Soul Food (1997) while the second Ms. Williams starred in the cable TV series of the same name.

Evanescence

Evanescence is a Rock band from Little Rock, Arkansas, consisting of:

• Amy Lee- Vocals and Piano (co-founder)
• John LeCompt - Guitar
• Rocky Gray - Drums
• William Boyd - Bass
• Terry Balsamo - Guitar (replacement for co-founder Ben Moody)

Past Band members:

• Ben Moody - Lead guitar (co-founder - left October 2003)
• David Hodges - Keyboards (left December 2002)

Evanescene's debut album, Fallen (2003), was nominated for five Grammys in 2003. Amy Lee is vocalist and songwriter.




Avril Lavigne

Wild child Avril Lavigne hit big in summer 2002 with her spiky-fun debut song, "Complicated," shifting pop music into a different direction.Lavigne, who was 17 at the time, didn't seem concerned with the glamour of the TRL-dominated pop world and such confidence allowed her star power to soar. The middle of three children in small-town Napanee, Ontario, Lavigne"s rock ambitions were noticeable around age two. By her early teens, she was already writing songs and playing guitar. The church choir, local festivals, and county fairs also allowed her voice heard, and luckily, Arista Records main manAntonio "L.A." Reid was listening. He offered her a deal, and at 16,Her musical dreams became reality. With Reid's assistance and a new Manhattan apartment,Lavigne found herself surrounded by prime songwriters and producers, but it wasn't impressive enough for her to continue. She had always relied on her own ideas to create a musical spark, and things weren't going as planned.She wasn't disillusioned, though. She headed for Los Angeles and Nettwerk grabbed her. Producer/songwriterClif Magnes (Celine Dion,Wilson Phillips,Sheena Easton) weaked her melodic, edgy sound and her debut,Let Go, was the polished product. Singles such as "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi" hit the Top Ten while "I'm with You" and "Losing Grip" did moderately well at radio. Butch Walker of the Marvelous 3, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida, and Don Gilmore( Linkin Park,Good Charlotte,) signed on to produce her second album, Under My Skin, which appeared in May 2004. The album topped the Billboard charts and produced the number one hit "My Happy Ending." Other singles like "Nobody's Home" and "Fall to Pieces" did respectably well also. Settling down a bit from her punk rock wild child persona, Lavigne married her boyfriend of two years, Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley, in July 2006. ~ MacKenzie Wilson, All Music Guide

Foreign Artist