Curated playlist

1988 births

Kevin DurantKevin Durant wore number 35 to honor his murdered youth coach. Charles Craig was 35 when he died.
AdeleA friend posted Adele's three-song class demo on Myspace, and a record label phoned.
RihannaRobyn Rihanna Fenty, known worldwide as Rihanna, once waited in Jay-Z's office while lawyers finished drawing up a six-album contract with Def Jam Recordings. The music executive Antonio "L.A." Reid had told Jay-Z not to let the teenager…
Stephen CurryVirginia Tech offered Stephen Curry only a walk-on spot. He later became the NBA's all-time three-point leader.
Kevin LoveKevin Love grabbed 31 rebounds in one game in November 2010. It set a Timberwolves record.
Jihadi JohnMohammed Emwazi, known around the world as Jihadi John, hid everything about himself in front of a camera except his eyes. He dressed in black from head to toe, with only a pair of tan desert boots breaking the colour. His voice gave away…
Stephen Glover (screenwriter)Donald Glover hired his younger brother Stephen to co-write Atlanta with no TV writing experience.
Nicolás OtamendiNicolás Otamendi played every minute of Argentina's 2022 World Cup campaign. He also gave away France's opening penalty.
Emma StoneEmma Stone, born Emily Jean Stone, once built a PowerPoint presentation for an audience of her parents. Its title was "Project Hollywood," and its purpose was to persuade them to let a teenager from Arizona pursue acting in California. The…
Benny BlancoBenny Blanco walked onstage on the 13th of June 2013 at the 44th Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony. The award in his hands was the Hal David Starlight Award, given to young artists who have already made an impression on the music…
Vanessa HudgensVanessa Hudgens is an American actress and singer, born on the 14th of December 1988. In August 2007, a Disney Channel sequel starring her drew more than 17.2 million viewers in the United States. That made it the most-watched Disney…
Michael CeraMichael Cera, the Canadian actor and musician born on the 7th of June 1988, owes his career to a case of chickenpox. At the age of three, stuck in bed, he watched Ghostbusters over and over. He memorized every line of dialogue and came to…
Zoë KravitzZoë Kravitz was only two years old when her father put her name on a record. The song is called "Flowers for Zoë," and it appears on Mama Said, the second album by the musician Lenny Kravitz. He wrote it as a tribute to his young daughter.…
Hayley WilliamsHayley Williams was 16 years old when her band Paramore released its debut album, All We Know Is Falling, in 2005. Readers of Alternative Press later voted her second in a poll of the five greatest pop-punk vocalists of all time. Yet…
Hill KourkoutisHill Kourkoutis became the first woman to win the Juno Award for Recording Engineer of the Year in 2022.
FKA TwigsFKA Twigs chose the first three letters of her stage name for how they sounded, not for what they meant. Many listeners assumed FKA stood for "formerly known as". She has said in multiple interviews that it does not. Her own explanation…
Jonathan BaileyJonathan Bailey was five years old when his grandmother took him to see Oliver! in London, and that single outing settled what he wanted to do with his life. His first ever appearance on a stage came in a primary school production of…
Brenda SongBrenda Song was six years old when she and her mother left Carmichael, California, for Los Angeles. The move was meant to support her acting career. The rest of the family followed two years later. Song had been born in that Sacramento…
ASAP RockyASAP Rocky became a radio name in August 2011, when his single "Peso" leaked online. Within weeks, Hot 97, a high-profile New York station, was playing it. The song helped push cloud rap, a style of hip hop, into mainstream attention. The…
GrimesGrimes is the stage name of Claire Elise Boucher, a Canadian musician whose name came from a mistake. When MySpace let artists list three musical genres, she typed "grime" in all three boxes. She had no idea what grime music actually was.…
Jamie Campbell BowerJamie Campbell Bower once needed up to eight hours of make-up work in a single day to become Vecna, the monstrous villain of the Netflix series Stranger Things. The man beneath the prosthetics is an English actor, singer, and guitarist. He…