Natalie Merchant

She would also go on to appear on PBS' Sessions at West 54th and VH1's Hard Rock Live before the year's end.

Natalie Anne Merchant (born October 26, 1963) is an American alternative rock singer-songwriter.

Natalie Merchant was born October 26, 1963, in Jamestown, New York, the third of four children of Anthony and Anne Merchant.

Her paternal grandfather, who played the accordion, mandolin and guitar, emigrated to the United States from Sicily; his surname was "Mercante" before it was anglicized.

When Merchant was a child, her mother listened to music (primarily Petula Clark but also the Beatles, Al Green, Aretha Franklin) and encouraged her children to study music, but would not allow television after Natalie was 12.

"'I was taken to the symphony a lot because my mother loved classical music. But I was dragged to see Styx when I was 12. We had to drive 100 miles to Buffalo, New York. Someone threw up next to me and people were smoking pot. It was terrifying. I remember Styx had a white piano which rose out of the stage. It was awe-inspiring and inspirational.'"

"She [her mother] had show tunes, she had the soundtrack from West Side Story and South Pacific. And then eventually... she'd always liked classical music and then she married a jazz musician, so that's the kind of music I was into. I never really had friends who sat around and listened to the stereo and said 'hey, listen to this one', so I'd never even heard of who Bob Dylan was until I was 18."

She joined the band 10,000 Maniacs in 1981 and was lead vocalist and primary lyricist for the group.

She considered a career in special education after taking part in a summer program for disabled children, but in 1981 she started singing for a band, Still Life, which became 10,000 Maniacs.

Merchant was lead singer and primary lyricist for 10,000 Maniacs, joining in its infancy in 1981 while she was a student at Jamestown Community College.

The group recorded their first album Human Conflict Number Five, and recorded a corresponding music video at the Hotel Franklin and at Group W Westinghouse studios in Jamestown, New York, in 1982.

Merchant sang lead vocals, and later played the piano as well on seven studio albums with 10,000 Maniacs.

Merchant says she did not have a television set between 1988 and 1989: "I grew up in a house where no one watched the news on television and no one read the paper. I've been discovering these things as I get older, and the news has affected me more than it ever has before."

Merchant started working in a health food store at 16.

She remained with the group for their first seven albums before leaving to begin her solo career in 1993.

She has since released nine studio albums as a solo artist.

In 1993 she announced that she was leaving the group, citing a lack of creative control over the music she wrote with the band.

Her last recording with the band, a cover of Bruce Springsteen's and Patti Smith's "Because the Night" at the 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged performance, reached #11 on the Hot 100 chart on February 18, 1994; becoming the band's highest-charting song in the U.S.

After her split with 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant was so eager to begin writing her own material that she went home that very day and composed the song "I May Know the Word", which was originally meant to appear on the soundtrack to the Tom Hanks movie Philadelphia.

The song was eventually cut from the soundtrack, but it would go on to appear on Merchant's debut solo album, Tigerlily, which was released on the Elektra label in 1995.

The third song on the album, "Beloved Wife", was featured as the first song in the trailer for the film Message in a Bottle.

Tigerlily was a critical and commercial success, spawning her first top-ten hit in the single "Carnival", and achieving top-40 success with subsequent singles "Wonder" and "Jealousy".

The album would go on to sell over five million copies, and continues to be Merchant's most successful album to date.

She did extensive touring for it and made numerous television appearances, including performances on Saturday Night Live, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and on late-night talk shows.

The media's immediate and critical effect on culture and cultural icons was of particular interest to Merchant.

In "River", a song from Tigerlily, Merchant defends River Phoenix as she castigates the media for systematically dissecting the child actor after his death.

Three years passed before Merchant released her second solo effort, Ophelia.

While Tigerlily contained sparse instrumentation, the music on Ophelia had lusher arrangements.

The reprise at the close of the album featured a symphonic arrangement composed and conducted by British composer Gavin Bryars with whom she would collaborate nine years later to put Shakespeare's sonnets to music.

Merchant treated the recording of Ophelia as a series of workshops, where she would invite various musicians she had met over the years into her home studio to collaborate and record.

While Ophelia is not a concept record in the traditional sense, the name of the album and the title track are a literary reference to Shakespeare's Ophelia.

The first single off the album was a happy and uncharacteristically simple song called "Kind and Generous", which received massive airplay on VH1 and which solidified Merchant's role as a bona fide solo artist.

That summer, Sarah McLachlan invited Merchant to co-headline the year's biggest music festival with her, Lilith Fair.

The exposure from the tour helped the album reach Platinum status in just under a year, with subsequent singles "Break Your Heart" and "Life Is Sweet" receiving moderate airplay on adult contemporary stations.

No video was filmed for the latter, however, with a clip from Merchant's appearance on VH1 Storytellers being used instead.

In 1998, Merchant also recorded George Gershwin's "But Not for Me" for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody, a tribute to George Gershwin, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.

In 1998, Merchant collaborated on the making of the album Mermaid Avenue with Billy Bragg and Wilco, which set previously unreleased Guthrie lyrics to music by Bragg.

The Ophelia tour ended in 1999 with the final few shows being performed and recorded on Broadway.

The performance would be released as the album Natalie Merchant: Live in Concert with a companion video of the same name.

The performance was notable in that it featured numerous covers including songs by David Bowie, Neil Young, and Katell Keineg.