Jack Johnson was born on May 18, 1975 in Oahu, Hawaii. He is the son of famous surfer Jeff Johnson. In 2001, Jack Johnson released his debut album Brushfire Fairytales. It features Jack Johnson on vocals/guitars/piano, Adam Topol on drums/percussion and Merlo Podlewski on bass and has been certified platinum by the RIAA. He then went on to release his sophomore album entitled On and On. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and has since gone on to earn a platinum certification. In 2005, Jack Johnson released his third album, In Between Dreams. It peaked at the number two position in the Billboard 200 and has since gone on to receive a double platinum certification. On February 5, 2008, he released Sleep Through the Static. The album debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, selling about 375,000 copies in its first week, including 139,000 digital downloads, which at the time was a record high for digital downloads. It also debuted at number one on the Worldwide chart with sales of 577,000. Sleep Through the Static remained at number one on the Billboard 200 in its second week of release, by which time it had sold over 180,000 copies as well as its third week, in which it sold 105,000 copies. The album was made #45 in Q’s 50 Best Albums of the Year 2008.
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Best known for her role as Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical film series, Vanessa Hudgens is an California born singer and actress that was born on December 14, 1988. She began her professional career at the age of 8 years old by appearing in small productions of Cinderella, The Music Man, Carousel, The King And I and The Wizard Of Oz. In 2003 she made her film debut by appearing as Noel in the Movie Thirteen. She also appeared in the movie Thunderbirds. In September of 2006 she launched her music career with her debut album "V". It hit the charts at the number twenty four position and would later go gold. A year later she would be involved in a scandal where apparently nude photos of her ended up on the internet. Hudgens publicist would later state that the photo was taken privately and never intended for public viewing. Vanessa would later apologize over the incident. In July of 2008, Vanessa Hudgens released her sophomore album entitled Identified. It opened to generally favorable reviews from critics. It sold over 22,000 copies it’s first week, which is almost 50% less than the opening sales of her first album.
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Lordi is a hard rock & heavy metal band from Rovaniemi, Finland formed in 1996. It features the members Mr. Lordi, Amen, Ox, Awa and Kita. Lordi was signed by the BMG Finland recording company and in 2002 their first single, "Would You Love A Monsterman?" became a smash hit and not long after that, their first album, Get Heavy, sold 66,000 copies in Finland. Lordi then released their sophomore album in 2004 entitled The Monsterican Dream. It was Lordi’s worst selling album to date. Undeterred they headed back to the studio, and in 2006 they released The Arockalypse. The album has sold triple platinum in Finland and gold in Sweden and Germany. On October 29, 2008 they released Deadache. The first single from the album, "Bite It Like a Bulldog" was released on September 3, 2008. Lordi was featured on the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards in Copenhagen when Mr. Lordi presented the award for rock, and they were also the closing act playing their single Hard Rock Hallelujah. They also performed on Britain’s Making Your Mind Up for the Eurovision Song Contest. Lordi performed on the main stage at Ozzfest 2007 and later that year toured with Type O Negative and Twin Method until Halloween night.
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The Jonas Brothers is a pop band that has released four albums since their debut in 2006. The band started off as the project of Nick Jonas and includes his two brothers, Kevin Jonas and Joe Jonas. At the young age of 7, Nick Jonas began appearing in several Broadway plays which included A Christmas Carol, Annie Get Your Gun and Beauty And The Beast. It was the song entitled Joy To The World (A Christmas Prayer) that he had written with his father that opened the door to his future success. It was released to Christian radio and caught the attention of Columbia Records. He was signed to Columbia and INO Records in a dual record deal. Then in 2005 Columbia Records got a new president who listened to Nick Jonas’ record. He then decided to sign him and his brothers to an exclusive contract. They released their debut album in 2005 titled It’s About Time. Since then they have released three other records, Jonas Brothers in 2007, A Little Bit Longer in 2008 and Lines, Vines And Trying Times in 2009. At the 51st grammy awards the Jonas Brothers were nominated for the Best New Artist Award.
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Kylie Minogue was born on May 28,1968 in Melbourne, Australia. She is the first child of Ronald Charles Minogue, an accountant and Carol Jones, a former dancer. Kylie Minogue attended classes at Camberwell High School in Melbourne along with her sister Dannii. At the age of twelve, Kylie appeared in small roles in soap operas on Australian television such as The Sullivans and Skyways, before being cast in one of the lead roles in The Henderson Kids. She gave her first singing performance in 1983, on the weekly music show, Young Talent Time. Then in 1986 she was cast in the soap opera Neighbours. During a Fitzroy Football Club benefit concert with other Neighbours cast members, Minogue performed "The Loco-Motion" and was signed to a recording contract with Mushroom Records in 1987. Released as a single, the recording spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian music charts. As a result, Kylie Minogue then recorded and released her debut album, Kylie, in 1988. Kylie was a number one album in the United Kingdom, and it produced three number one singles in Australia. Kylie has since gone on to sell over thirteen million copies. Kylie Minogue has since released nine more albums and has over sixty million in album sales.
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Leona Lewis is a British born singer and song writer. She was born on April 3, 1985 in the London Borough of Islington. Her full name is Leona Louise Lewis. When she was young, her parents enrolled her at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, and from there she attended the Italia Conti Academy and the BRIT School. It was here that she learned to play instruments such as the guitar and piano and began to write her own songs in the hope of becoming a singer or songwriter. In early 2006, Lewis auditioned for the third series of The X Factor, singing "Over the Rainbow". She made it through to the final stages and was finally announced the winner on 16 December 2006, winning a Ł1 million recording contract. She was mentored by Simon Cowell and released her debut album, Spirit in 2007. It was released in the U.S in 2008. Spirit has sold over 8 million copies and spawned several singles including Bleeding Love and I Will Be. Leona Lewis’s second album is planned for a worldwide release in November 2009. Production was said to have begun in February 2009, including work with Ryan Tedder, Justin Timberlake and Timbaland.
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Paula DeAnda is an American pop/R&B singer-songwriter and actress born on November 3, 1989. Paula DeAnda was born in San Angelo, Texas, to Mexican-American parents. She has three siblings, including two sisters named Brandi and Jessica, and a brother named Sterling. She began performing songs by her favorite artists with her cousins at family barbecues. At an early age she started taking piano lessons and singing around town, and also would play in local weddings. In 2002, DeAnda’s family decided to move to Corpus Christi in order to further her musical career. Paula DeAnda’s major breakthrough came when she auditioned for Clive Davis and Kenneth Brown SR. then was signed to Arista Records on the spot. "Doing Too Much" was the lead single from her self-titled debut album. It was released in July 2006 in the United States. This was followed by the release of the debut album on August 29, 2006 which features guest appearances by Baby Bash, The D.E.Y., Bow Wow, Lil Wayne, V Nice, Ak’Sent, and P.B. On September 29, 2008, DeAnda went to a charity festival for Hurricane Ike in Dallas, Texas. She performed her hits "Easy", "Walk Away" and "Doing Too Much". Then, after the performance, she volunteered to be in a dunk tank full of mud. Rapper Yung Joc threw a ball to dunk DeAnda in the mud. Paula DeAnda is currently working on her sophomore album, due to be released in 2009.
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Good Charlotte was formed in 1996 in Waldorf, Maryland. The members of the band are identical twin brothers Joel Madden on vocals and Benji Madden on lead guitar and backing vocals.Other members of the band include Billy Martin on rhythm guitar and keyboards, Paul Thomas on bass guitar and Dean Butterworth on drums. Good Charlotte started out by playing at small bars. They soon caught the attention of the rock band, Lit. Good Charlotte played some dates with the band Blink-182, who had just experienced mainstream success with their album, Enema of the State. All of this caught the attention of major music labels, and Good Charlotte eventually signed with Epic Records in 1999. In 2000 they released their self titled album, Good Charlotte. It spawned the singles "Little Things", "The Motivation Proclamation" and "Festival Song". In 2002 they released The Young and the Hopeless. Then in 2004 they released The Chronicles of Life and Death. The album was released with two different versions: a "Life" version and a "Death" version which both came with different cover art .Good Charlotte would go on to release one more album in 2007, Good Morning Revival. As of July 2008, Good Charlotte has received eight awards from twenty nominations including aMTV Music Video Award, MuchMusic Awards and Kerrang! Awards.
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Serj Tankian was born on August 21, 1967, in Beirut, Lebanon. He and his family emigrated to Los Angeles in 1975. Although Tankian disliked school, he maintained a 4.0 grade average. Daron Malakian met Serj Tankian in 1992, while they both shared the same rehearsal studio in different bands. Serj was playing keyboard for a band, and Daron was singing lead vocals for another band. They formed a jam band called Soil with Domingo Laranio (drums) and Dave Hakopyan (bass). Around this time, they also met Shavo Odadjian. The next year, in 1994, after one supposed jam session recording and one live show, Dave and Domingo left, thinking the band wasn’t going anywhere. The band later broke up and Tankian and Malakian formed a new band "System of a Down". During System of a Down’s days, Serj Tankian was the vocalist in other bands for certain songs such as Mushroom Cult by Dog Fashion Disco and lent his vocals to the song Mein by Deftones. In 2007, he released his debut album, Elect the Dead. The official tour for Elect the Dead commenced on October 12, 2007 with a show at Chicago’s Vic theater. Tankian is currently co-writing a musical with the American playwright Steven Sater. It is based on the Ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound. He stated that eight songs have been completed and that there will be a record.
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The Cure is an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. It’s lineup includes Robert Smith, Porl Thompson, Simon Gallup and Jason Cooper. In May 1979 they released their debut album, Three Imaginary Boys, through Fiction Records. It was later released in the United States with a slightly different song line-up as Boys Don’t Cry. The album reached number forty-four on the UK Albums Chart. The Cure then went on to release their sophomore record, Seventeen Seconds in April of 1980. The album ended up peaking at the number twenty spot on the Billboard charts. Between 1982 and 1996, The Cure released seven studio albums, all of which reached the Top 10 in the UK. The most successful of these was Wish (1992) which reached number one in the UK and number two on the US Billboard 200. Since the release of Seventeen Seconds, The Cure has released a total of eleven studio albums, ten compilation albums, four live albums, thirty nine singles and forty three music videos. The last three studio albums Bloodflowers (2000), The Cure (2004) and 4:13 Dream have had mixed success, reaching numbers fourteen, eight and thirty-three in the UK respectively.
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