Curated playlist
American women country singers
- Taylor SwiftEvery record label in Nashville turned Taylor Swift away when she was 11. She kept going and began writing songs.
- BeyoncéOn the 13th of December 2013, Beyoncé released a complete album on the iTunes Store with no warning and no promotion. Within six days it had sold one million digital copies, a record for any album on iTunes at the time. The artist behind…
- Gwyneth PaltrowGwyneth Paltrow won the lead in Emma with a perfect Texas accent. The director said it sold him.
- Hayden PanettiereHayden Panettiere was eleven months old when she first appeared on screen, in a 1990 advertisement for a Playskool toy train. That commercial was the start of a working life that now spans several decades. How does an infant in commercials…
- Dolly PartonDolly Parton refused to give Elvis Presley half the publishing rights to "I Will Always Love You."
- Reba McEntireReba McEntire, later known as the Queen of Country, nearly missed her Grand Ole Opry debut on the 17th of September 1977. A guard at the gate overlooked her name on the list of performers. Her parents and her older sister Alice had driven…
- Gwen StefaniGwen Stefani had a hit in 2005 that changed how Americans bought music. Her single “Hollaback Girl” rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It also became the first song downloaded one million times in the United States. The woman…
- 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.…
- 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…
- Linda RonstadtLinda Ronstadt sings harmony on Under African Skies, a track on Paul Simon's album Graceland, and its second verse contains a line written for her. The line reads, "Take this child, Lord, from Tucson, Arizona...." Simon's tribute suits a…