Curated playlist

American sopranos

Britney SpearsBritney Spears sold the rights to her entire music catalogue for a reported $200 million. The buyer was the music publisher Primary Wave, and the BBC reported that the purchase closed on the 30th of December 2025. The price reflects a body…
AaliyahAaliyah signed her first record deal at twelve. By 22 she had three albums and two films behind her.
Kristen BellKristen Bell's first audition came in 1992, for a suburban Detroit production of Raggedy Ann and Andy. She won two parts at once: a banana and a tree. Nobody could have guessed from that start where she would end up. Bell became an…
Mariah CareyMariah Carey handed her demo tape to a record boss at a party in December 1988. He turned his car around.
Cyndi LauperCyndi Lauper wore almost a pound of necklaces to the Grammy Awards ceremony in 1985. The excess suited the woman wearing it. Lauper is an American singer, songwriter and actress, born on the 22nd of June 1953. She is known for eccentric…
Ariana GrandeAriana Grande organized a benefit concert after the Manchester Arena bombing. It raised $23 million.
Olivia RodrigoOlivia Rodrigo was a teenager when one of her songs drew more than 15.7 million streams around the world in a single day, on the 11th of January 2021. The next day, the total passed 17 million. Looking back, she described it this way:…
SelenaSelena Quintanilla-Pérez was 23 years old when she died on the 31st of March 1995, and major television networks interrupted their regular programming to announce it. She was a singer from Texas who performed Tejano music, a…
Christina AguileraChristina Aguilera sang "A Sunday Kind of Love" on the television contest Star Search in 1990 and was eliminated in the semi-final round. That loss decided nothing. She would go on to sell more than 100 million records worldwide, and…
Dolly PartonDolly Parton refused to give Elvis Presley half the publishing rights to "I Will Always Love You."
Kelly ClarksonKelly Clarkson's first single debuted at number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. The following week it rose to number 52. Then it shot to number one, breaking a record for the biggest leap to the top that The Beatles had…
Billie EilishBillie Eilish was 18 years old when she left the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020 holding all four of the ceremony's general field prizes. Only one person had done that before her, and no woman had. Not long before, she had been a…
Joan BaezJoan Baez was singing at a music festival called Bratislavská lýra in Communist Czechoslovakia in May 1989 when someone cut off her microphone. From the stage, she had just greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group.…
Sabrina CarpenterSabrina Carpenter was one of 7,000 entrants in an online singing contest that opened in October 2008. The contest was called The Next Miley Cyrus Project, and Miley Cyrus herself ran it. Carpenter did not win. She placed third, in 2010.…
Jennifer LopezJennifer Lopez wore a plunging green Versace silk chiffon dress to the Grammy Awards in February 2000, and a single outfit changed how people used the internet. The dress became the most popular search query in Google's history. That flood…
Amanda SeyfriedAmanda Seyfried has headlined films that together took in more than $2.4 billion at the worldwide box office. In 2022, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She holds a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe…
Nicole ScherzingerIn August 2003, Nicole Scherzinger walked into the Arista Records office in New York carrying a demo CD of songs she had written herself. She was performing under her Hawaiian family name, Nicole Kea, and she wanted a solo recording…
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…
Chappell RoanChappell Roan stood in front of a crowd in June 2024 and admitted she was having a hard time that day. Her career, she told them, was going really fast and was hard to keep up with. Then she said the line that frames her whole story: "This…
Kristin ChenowethKristin Chenoweth is 4 feet 11 inches tall, and as a child she sang a song about it. At the age of 12, she stood alone before the national conference of the Southern Baptist Convention and performed "Four Feet Eleven," an Evie song. Its…
Diana RossDiana Ross got her name from a birth certificate mistake. Her mother had planned to name her Diane.