LeAnn Rimes
Country superstar LeAnn Rimes was born Margaret LeAnn Rimes on August 28, 1982, in Jackson, Mississippi. Raised in Garland, Texas, Rimes began singing and tap dancing at two years old, and eventually competed in local talent contests. At the young age of eleven, Rimes released her debut album on an independent label. Dallas disc jockey and record promoter, Bill Mack, was so impressed with Rimes’s mature voice that he mentored her for mainstream country music, providing her with a song he had penned for Patsy Cline in the 60s, which became Rimes’ first single, "Blue." On the success of Rimes’s hit debut single, country fans could hardly believe their eyes and ears when they discovered that the singer was just thirteen years old. Rimes’s breakout year would see her performing a slew of concerts and press to promote her new album. At this time it was also discovered that the song "Blue" was actually recorded by three other artists prior to Rimes, dispelling the myth that Mack had waited for just the right Patsy Cline protégée. Rimes’s auspicious debut was recognized with a Grammy award as well as nominations for the Country Music Association Horizon award and the CMA Best Country Singer, making her the youngest singer in CMA award history to receive a nomination. In 1998, Rimes released her next full-length album, Top of the World, followed one year later by her next self-titled album.
The new millennium saw Rimes’s growing maturity reflected in her music, on such albums as I Need You in 2001 and the pop-oriented Twisted Angel in 2002. The new millennium also saw some setbacks for Rimes – in 2000, she sued her father for misappropriating over $7 million of her earnings. On February 23, 2002, twenty-year-old Rimes married dancer, Dean Sheremet, whom she met while recording Twisted Angel. Also that year, Rimes released her first Greatest Hits album. Rimes’s 2005 release, This Woman, yielded the singer’s best sales in over five years, landing her on the top of the Billboard country chart and garnering a Grammy nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. For one season in 2005 Rimes hosted the reality TV series, Nashville Star. The following year, Rimes released her first full-pop album, Whatever We Wanna, in Europe. The album features several songs co-written by Rimes. On the big screen, Rimes has appeared in the 2002 film, Coyote Ugly, alongside Tyra Banks, John Goodman, and Piper Perabo. Rimes also contributed to the soundtrack of the film, as she had also done for the 1997 film, Con Air, starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, and John Malkovich; as well as Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde in 2003, starring Reese Witherspoon. YUDDY |
