Beth Hart

Beth Hart (born January 24, 1972) is an American musician from Los Angeles, California.

Hart started playing clubs in Hollywood at the age of 15, and eventually enlisted bassist Tal Herzberg and guitarist Jimmy Khoury for Beth Hart and the Ocean of Souls, which was recorded in 1993.

It includes "Am I the One" (which later appeared on her first official record Immortal) and a pop-rock cover of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

In 1993, Hart appeared on Ed McMahon's Star Search, ultimately winning the Female Vocalist competition.

Hart has stated that winning the show did not land her a record deal due to the stigma associated with performing on the show, and that she had burned through the prize money she received by the time she struck a deal with Atlantic Records.

The first released album with the Beth Hart Band, Immortal, was released in 1996 through Atlantic, scanning 13,000 copies and featured the single "God Bless You".

After touring the record, including at Lollapalooza in 1996, the Beth Hart Band disbanded due to infighting.

She rose to fame with the release of her 1999 single "LA Song (Out of This Town)" from her second album Screamin' for My Supper.

The single was a number one hit in New Zealand, as well as reaching the top 5 of the US Adult Contemporary and Top 10 on the Billboard Adult Top 40 charts.

Hart's second solo album, Screamin' for My Supper was released in 1999, and featured "LA Song (Out of This Town)", a No. 1 hit in New Zealand, as well as a Top 10 Adult Contemporary chart hit in the US.

The song also aired during Episode 17 of the 10th and final season of Beverly Hills, 90210.

At the same time, Hart was singing the lead role in Love, Janis, an off-Broadway musical based on Joplin's letters home to her mother.

Hart's follow-up album, Leave the Light On, was released in 2003 via Koch Records, after being dropped by Atlantic presumably due to Hart's drug addiction.

While still successful in New Zealand, the album saw her breakthrough in the European market, with the single "Learning to Live" reaching number 1 in Denmark, while the album achieved a 2× Platinum certification.

"Learning to Live" was also used as the theme song to Losing It with Jillian on NBC.

In 2003, she became the first and only musician to feature as backing vocalist for a Deep Purple song ("Haunted", released on the Bananas album).

It also included "Am I the One", a fan favorite that ended up on her first DVD that was released in 2005.

Two years later in 2005, Hart released her first live album, Live at Paradiso, which was recorded at a former church in Amsterdam, and released both as a CD and a DVD.

It featured a variety of Hart's self written songs and a cover of "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin.

Hart appears on Toots Thielemans' album One More For the Road on the track "I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues", which was released in 2006.

Hart's fourth solo studio album 37 Days was released in Europe in July 2007, and eventually as a DVD as well.

The album debuted at No. 1 in Denmark and spent two weeks at the top, her first album to top a national chart, and additionally reached a Gold certification in the country.

The record was her last on a major label (Universal), though it solidified her European commercial success.

Hart entered Los Angeles' High School for the Performing Arts in 10th grade as a vocal and cello major.

At the prompting of a classmate, she soon began singing during open mic nights in the Belly Room of the Comedy Store.

Her fifth solo studio album My California was released in 2010, and was her first on Provogue Records.

Hart delivered music to the end-scene of the last episode of season 6 of Californication, with the title song of this record "My California".

During this time, Hart collaborated with Slash on "Mother Maria", released on the iTunes version of Slash's 2010 solo album, Slash, and additionally collaborated with rapper Born on his single "It Hurts", released in February 2012.

Hart has had several well received collaborations with guitarist Joe Bonamassa, beginning in 2011 with Don't Explain, followed with the Grammy-nominated Seesaw (2013) and Live in Amsterdam (2014), the latter of which topped the Billboard Blues Album Chart, a chart that she has topped six times.

On August 23, 2012, her song "Take It Easy on Me" from My California was used in the first episode of the eighth series of the BBC TV drama Waterloo Road.

On July 31, 2012, the album was released in the United States.

On the same date, she released an EP titled Introducing Beth Hart.

Her latest work with Bonamassa was the 2018 album Black Coffee.

Hart has had two number 1 singles in Denmark, "As Good as It Gets" and "Learning to Live", as well a double platinum-selling album, Leave the Light On.

Hart's most recent album, released in 2022, is A Tribute to Led Zeppelin, a collection of covers of Led Zeppelin songs.

Hart was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.

As a 4-year-old, she began to play piano.

At first, she concentrated on classical works by Bach and Beethoven, but as she grew older, she also began to play pieces by artists such as Etta James, Otis Redding and Led Zeppelin.

Regarding her childhood in an interview with Don Wilcock, Hart stated, "When I was a kid, my dad left me in a bad way, and what fucked me up the most was that he would be in the lives of my other sisters and brothers, but he wouldn't be in mine."

At the age of 22, Hart lost her sister from complications of AIDS.