Nina - Someday

Born November 1, 1980, in Pasay City, Marifil Niña Girado, was raised in Quezon City with three other siblings. Growing up, Nina, much like any aspiring singer, admired Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys and Gary V., Ella Mae Saison, and Regine Velasquez on the home front.

Nina stands barely over five feet but her vocal prowess can stand up to a tidal wave. As far as she can remember, Nina has always been in the solemn presence of music. Her dad, Filbert, is a member of the Bayanihan Boy’s Choir and her mom, Maria Daulet, plays the piano. She was five, singing in a corner when her dad gave her special notice. Intensive vocal training was the next chapter -- belting with her body submerged in a drum of water (hence, the tidal wave) and exercising those vocal chords early in the morning.

Indeed, hard work and dedication pay off — eventually. She was a 7-week champion at the most successful singing competition in the country, Tanghalan ng Kampeon—the undisputed springboard for fresh talent. Before casting glorious light on the bleak music scene, pop and R&B find, Nina, found satisfaction soothing tired souls at the local clubs. Songs of love and loss, songs of firsts and lasts all delivered with intense passion and fiery emotion. Whatever the message, the effect is lasting, overwhelming. She can wail with the power of a crashing tidal wave or whine with the softness of a trickling rainfall. Waxing poetic describing vocal range can only mean one thing—when she sings, expect to be moved in ways you never imagined.

Her claim to fame isn’t only her voice but the story behind her discovery. The demo tape she submitted to Warner Music Philippines sampled her rendition of Foolish Heart. It was at that moment when hearing the tape, Warner Music executives immediately realized her potential and signed her without even actually seeing the woman behind the voice. The rest was, as we know it, history.

Darren Hayes - I Miss You

San Francisco-based pop/rock singer/songwriter Darren Hayes (born Darren Stanley Hayes) used to organize performances at home at a very young age supported by his mother, who became his first fan. After getting involved in school plays, the young and promising artist had the opportunity to join Daniel Jones in an outfit originally called Crush. They formed Savage Garden in 1997 in their native Brisbane, Australia.

Darren Hayes ended his marriage and decided to settle in the U.S. while Daniel Jones stayed in Australia before releasing their second and last album called Affirmation. Savage Garden split up in 2001, leaving behind three successful years including the honor of becoming a leading number in the annual Most Broadcast Artists List issued by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) for two years.

Darren Hayes debuted as a solo artist with the release of Spin, recorded in San Francisco, CA, and co-produced with Grammy Award-winning Walter Afanasieff. The 12-track record featured the hit single "Insatiable," a chart-topping song in Australia and one of the most added tracks on the American Top 40 radio stations soon after its release.

Nickelback - If Everyone Cared

Canada's Nickelback started life as a cover band in Hanna, 215 kilometers northeast of Calgary. Eventually, they tired of playing other people's songs, and singer/guitarist.

Chad Kroeger put together a collection of original songs, borrowed money from his stepfather, and went to Vancouver to record the band in a friend's studio. Based on the results, Kroeger's guitarist brother, Mike, and pal bassist Ryan Vikedal all relocated to Vancouver in 1996; that same year, they recorded and released the EP Hesher and full-length Curb independently, then embarked on a series of cross-country tours.

In late 1998, the bandmembers started managing themselves, with Chad handling all the radio tracking, brother Mike Kroeger the distribution, and Ryan Vikedal all the bookings. A second LP, The State, was released independently in January 2000 during a period when Canadian content requirements were increased and local rock radio began desperately seeking out homegrown product. What they found was Nickelback's single "Leader of Men." The band toured ceaselessly for The State and 200 shows later, Nickelback had gone from virtual unknowns to playing in front of over a million people alongside the likes of Creed, 3 Doors Down, Fuel, and more. The band's post-grunge commercial appeal wasn't lost on the record industry, and The State was snapped up by Roadrunner in the U.S. and EMI in Canada. It eventually sold an impressive 500,000 copies.

Many of the songs that comprised the third album, Silver Side Up, were written even before The State was released in America and road-tested in front of eager audiences on cross-country treks. The other significant change was Chad Kroeger's conscious decision to write his lyrics in a more direct manner, rather than the metaphorical lyrics of previous releases. "Too Bad" pertained to the father who was never around when Chad and his brother were growing up; "Never Again" was a song inspired by broken homes; and "How You Remind Me," the first single from the album, was written at rehearsals shortly before the band went into the studio.

To record the album, Nickelback worked with producer Rick Parashar (Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog) at the same studio they used for The State, Vancouver's Green House. The combination of the band's growing popularity and the quality of the songs sent Silver Side Up into the sales charts around the world, spearheaded by the hit single "How You Remind Me." (It was only the second time in history since the Guess Who's "American Woman" that a Canadian band had been number one on both the Canadian and U.S. rock charts at the same time.) After Nickelback's initial mainstream exposure, Kroeger produced Vancouver natives Default and collaborated with Saliva singer Josey Scott for the Spiderman soundtrack.

The more polished The Long Road arrived in 2003. The single "Someday" shot to number seven on the Billboard charts, and the album sold five million copies worldwide and was supported by another successful international tour. In February of 2005 it was announced that Ryan Vikedal had left the band, but Vikedal claimed in an interview he was pushed out for not being "the type of drummer" the band required. A month later it was announced that former 3 Doors Down drummer Daniel Adair was his replacement, and that Nickelback was jamming at Kroeger's studio in Vancouver in preparation for their next album. ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and the late Dimebag Darrell from Pantera were guests on the chart-topping All the Right Reasons, which saw release in October of 2005.

Will Young - Who Am I

"I don't want people to not know who I am. I don't want to be pigeonholed as the new George Michael, or the guy that won the reality TV show, or Mick Hucknall for the Noughties, or whatever nonsense gets said. It's just me and it's about having a bit of self-belief and turning up the volume a bit" – Will Young, in a café by the Thames, November 2005

Hold onto your trilby... In fact, take off your trilby and jump all over it... Will Young is back more confident and at ease with himself and his music. In less than four years he's won two Brits, had four Number One singles, two Number One albums, and sold out his last tour in 30 minutes. His first single was the fastest selling chart debut by a male artist. Aged 26, the boy from Berkshire is sharper, funnier, more confident, and all growed up. He's got a bit of perspective and he knows how TV, celebrity culture and the pop sausage factory work. But all of that is necessarily two-dimensional. Will Young isn't.

He understands how and why people might have fixed opinions about his tastes. "Here's a perfect example", he laughs. "I went to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And this fan came up to me and said, all shocked: 'Will Young! What are you doing at a Chili's concert?' I'm like, I've been listening to the Chilis for fucking ages!' It was very telling, people thought I shouldn't be into stuff like that."

Of late, Will's been having a bit of a fight. With himself, with the voices whispering "stick to the ballads", and with his music. His new single is called Switch It On. It's a party come tumbling out of your speakers. There are mad drums and dirty funk and raw, throaty vocals. It is, in a very good way, all over the place, - and it's definitely louder.

"That track took us a year and half to write!" he exclaims. That doesn't mean Young and his collaborators fussed and tinkered over it all that time, they just kept having ideas to make Switch It On madder, and bolder, and more brilliant (where 'brilliant' means something that 'shines hard'). They threw these ideas into the mix and wrestled them into line.

Switch It On is Will's defiant response to "feeling really shit about myself", and to the image that he felt was being portrayed of him. "It felt like I wasn't being true to myself. There's the line, 'I'm in a three-piece suit and shoes that don't fit me'. Which is basically saying that people shove you in all these categories. It's like, fuck off! And I looked around London and saw all these fake people just obsessed with how other people are viewing them. And I was obsessed with how people were viewing me. I felt like I'd lost the core of me. I felt that I'd gone back to being 17 again, and a lot of it was because of the job..."

But now, things have moved on "I've 'evolved', ha ha," he says laughing and sticking the quote marks round the word 'cause he knows how poncey it sounds. But still, it's true. "So obviously I wanted to come back with something that demonstrated that."

The new album is called Keep On, and one of the key songs on it is the title track that recalls the lascivious groove of George Michael's 'I Want Your Sex'. Keep On and Switch It On come from a similar place. We might call that place "an explosion in a carnival factory". They're songs that sound like they might collapse into a sweaty heap on the dancefloor any second. But they don't; they veer off, surefooted, in thrilling new directions.

"We didn't think about it, that was the key. That's why those songs are so good. You know," Young reflects, "maybe people are fed up a bit with songs. A well-crafted song is great. But there seem to be so many about where you can almost hear the writer thinking, 'right, now we're gonna hit them with the chorus at 40 seconds 'cause that'll get played on radio'... Well, that doesn't have any soul in it. I'd just got to the stage where I thought, I can't do that".

Will Young, of course, knows The Well-Crafted Song. He's made a bit of a career out of it. Leave Right Now, the lead single from Friday's Child, was spellbinding, glorious and exquisite. For those in any doubt, it emphatically revealed Young as an extravagantly gifted and soulful singer. It helped Friday's Child on its way to sales of over 1.5 million copies in the UK, and in 2004 Leave Right Now won its writer, Eg White, the Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically And Lyrically.

There's another Well-Crafted Song on Keep On. It's called All Time Love. It's an elegant ballad, and may well join Leave Right Now as a modern standard. Young nailed the lyric in one take – he knows how to sing songs like that.

Going brazenly off-message, he admits that there was a body of opinion around him that wanted All Time Love to be his comeback single. He says he said "no way", and he dug his heels in. "I just felt I had to move on and do something that was punchier, and was saying more. I just feel very different from two years ago, I've got different things to say and I think Switch It On really shows it. It was a slight uphill battle to get it as the first single but I don't mind that – if you're forced to justify what you're doing, it makes you see if you really believe in it. And," he says, letting loose that Joker-like smile, "I've definitely been forced to see if I believed in that song".

Around the same time he began filming his first acting role, in Stephen Frears' Mrs Henderson Presents. It's the story of a pre-War dancing girls show in London. He plays a choreographer and performer, alongside Bob Hoskins and Dame Judi Dench. He gets to sing All The Things You Are, the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein number that Frank Sinatra made his own.

The whole experience boosted his confidence (he'd always thought he'd like to act but hadn't done anything beyond am-dram while at Exeter University). It introduced him to a new creative world outside music, and opened his ears to new ideas for his new album. Recruiting some fresh writers along with noted string arranger Anne Dudley, and regrouping with the songwriting team he'd built for Friday's Child – Lipson, White, Karen Poole (formerly of Alisha's Attic), Blair Mackichan – he worked on songs that were a bit more... lively.

Think About It is one of his favourites. "It's quite sultry, then the chorus just rips out." With Dan Carey (Kylie's Slow) he wrote All I Want, "a great psychedelic Sixties song, it's really rough." With Mackichan (with whom he'd done Your Game, the soulful, gospel single from 'Friday's Child') he did Ain't Such a Bad Place To Be, "another rough one. I'm not Mr Tough or anything," he laughs, "but I did need to be tougher". He also wanted songs that had more emotional teeth. "I went through quite a tough stage last year," he concludes, "but in that period I wrote some really good tunes that have stuck around. I don't know, maybe you have to be a bit more angsty to produce believable, true, honest work. He hooked up with Nitin Sawhney, and together they came up with Home, a song born out of personal experiences. "It's wonderful, the lyrics are beautiful... It's all about resolution, about something being the way it has to be but that doesn't make it necessarily a good thing."

"You know," he shrugs, "I've predominantly sung songs about love before and, if I'm honest, I didn't understand them. And just because I've lived a bit more, seen a bit more of life, it was like taking off sunglasses and just going, 'ah, this is what goes on...' I just saw so much more in films and painting and plays and music. I had a revelational moment. 'Now I fucking get it!' And it's just a real shame that in life to have those moments you have to be really badly hurt". So it's time for people to get used to the real Will Young. He won't eat liver. He gets a bit claustrophobic. He overheats easily. And he knows who he is now.

Hilary Duff - With Love

Arguably the only teen pop star with the potential to rival or surpass the popularity of Britney Spears "albeit with a very different approach" Hilary Duff made a name for herself on the enormously successful Disney Channel/ABC Kids show Lizzie McGuire, which she parlayed into careers as a pop singer and film actress. Like most overnight successes, Duff paid her dues for a few years before her big break. Appearances in the 1997 women's Western True Women, 1998's Casper (as the Friendly Ghost's human friend Wendy), and 1999's The Soul Collector paved the way for her best-known role. Lizzie McGuire, which chronicled the ups and downs of junior high schooler Lizzie's life with live-action and animated clips, debuted in 2001 and very quickly became a huge hit with the preteen set. Aside from the show's unique format, one of the main reasons for its success was Duff herself. As Lizzie, she was pretty, funny, and smart, but not intimidatingly so; she had two best friends, Gordo and Miranda, so she wasn't super-popular or an outcast; and she was confident enough to do her own thing, but still vulnerable enough to have crushes on unattainable boys.

At the same time Lizzie was taking off, Duff also appeared in the indie film Human Nature, reflecting her continuing big-screen aspirations. Lizzie McGuire mania continued through 2002, and Duff began her first steps toward her singing career with the song "Santa Claus Lane," which appeared on the soundtrack to The Santa Clause 2, as well as her own Christmas album, also named Santa Claus Lane. That year, production ended on Lizzie McGuire, freeing up Duff to pursue other opportunities. Episodes of the show continued to run into 2003, but by that time Duff had begun to move on, appearing in the teen spy movie Agent Cody Banks and playing Lizzie one last time in The Lizzie McGuire Movie, where funnily enough, she goes to Italy and is mistaken for a teen pop star. The soundtrack to the movie also featured several songs by Duff, including the singles "Why Not" and "I Can't Wait," which were both successes in their own right; the soundtrack went platinum in summer 2003.

Around that time, Metamorphosis, Duff's bona fide debut as a singer, was released. The album had a hipper and more eclectic sound than any of the material she had been given previously, and helped establish her as a personality outside of her Lizzie McGuire fame. The album charted number two on the Billboard 200 on the week of its release, and its single "So Yesterday" topped the pop singles chart earlier that summer. Duff's omnipresence in 2003 continued with appearances at that year's MTV Video Music Awards and the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, where she accepted Lizzie McGuire's trophy for Favorite TV Show. She also appeared in that year's film Cheaper by the Dozen and embarked on a tour that fall.

2004 was just as busy for Duff. She appeared in movies like A Cinderella Story, Agent Cody Banks, and Raise Your Voice, and also released her self-titled second album, which exchanged the neutral fluffiness of Metamorphosis for an anthemic rock-pop style consistent with efforts from Ashlee Simpson and Avril Lavigne. The record continued to shape Duff's public persona, which was a continually evolving dynamo of branding, image, and teenage ambition. Released on September 28th (her 17th birthday), Hilary Duff eventually peaked at number two on both the Billboard 200 and the Top Internet Albums charts, and helped Hilary net "Most Searched by Kids and Teens on AOL" honors and more Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards. Publicity for the album continued into 2005. That June, The Perfect Man debuted; in a bit of genius casting, it featured Heather Locklear as Duff's unlucky-in-love mother.

In July, Duff started preparing for the August release of Most Wanted. The collection included three new songs -- including the single "Wake Up," written by Benji and Joel Madden from Good Charlotte -- as well as remixed versions of past Hilary hits like "So Yesterday" and "Come Clean." There was also the Most Wanted tour, which stretched into September, ending just in time for her 18th birthday. By this point, the Hilary Duff promotion machine was in overdrive: her website offered a pay-as-you-go mobile phone branded with her name and bundled with Hilary-themed ringtones and wallpapers. During 2006, Duff worked on the films War Inc. and Material Girls, and also found time to work on her fourth album, Dignity, which was inspired in part by her breakup with Joel Madden. Dignity was released in spring 2007.