Curated playlist
Republic Records artists
- Taylor SwiftEvery record label in Nashville turned Taylor Swift away when she was 11. She kept going and began writing songs.
- Drake (musician)Drake's 2006 mixtape Room for Improvement sold roughly 6,000 copies and earned him $304.04.
- Amy WinehouseAmy Winehouse won five Grammys singing by satellite from London at 3 a.m. Her visa was not processed in time.
- Lil WayneLil Wayne left school in tenth grade after his mother found a gun in his bag.
- Peter GabrielOn the 19th of June 1971, Peter Gabriel took a running jump off a stage and expected the audience to catch him. They moved aside instead. He landed on the floor and broke his ankle, then performed the next several Genesis shows with a…
- Ariana GrandeAriana Grande organized a benefit concert after the Manchester Arena bombing. It raised $23 million.
- Demi LovatoDemi Lovato, an American singer, songwriter and actress, sang the national anthem at Super Bowl LIV in 2020. Eighteen years earlier, in 2002, Lovato was a child playing a character named Angela on the children's series Barney & Friends.…
- Enrique IglesiasEnrique Iglesias once went to great lengths to hide the most famous surname in Spanish pop. He was a young man in Miami holding a demo cassette with one Spanish song and two English songs. He had borrowed the money to make it from his…
- The WeekndThe Weeknd is the stage name of Abel Tesfaye, a Canadian singer-songwriter born on the 16th of February 1990. The spelling is deliberate. Tesfaye chose the name because he had left home on a weekend, then dropped the last 'e' to avoid…
- Liam PayneLiam Payne, the English singer and songwriter who lived from 1993 to 2024, once performed in front of 26,000 people at a Wolverhampton Wanderers football match. He was still a child, and almost nobody beyond his home area knew his name.…
- Nicki MinajNicki Minaj turned down a record deal because it required a ghostwriter.
- Kid CudiKid Cudi was born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi in Cleveland on the 30th of January 1984. One day, while he was working at the BAPE store in New York, Kanye West came in and bought a few jackets. Cudi had forgotten to remove a security sensor…
- Lil JonLil Jon, the yelling voice of crunk, later made two albums of guided meditation.
- St. Vincent (musician)The musician St. Vincent took her name from a hospital in a Nick Cave song. It is where poet Dylan Thomas died.