Porcelain Black

Alaina Marie Beaton (born October 1, 1985), known professionally as Porcelain Black, is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, and model.

At age 16, she embarked on her music career as a solo act under the name Porcelain and the Tramps with Virgin Records.

However, Black and Virgin could not agree on the music she would record.

Her music was posted to her Myspace account, "rockcitynosebleed", where she gained millions of hits.

After three years of trying to get out of the contract, she signed with RedOne's Universal Republic imprint, 2101 Records, late in 2009, and began working on her debut album.

Vocally compared to Courtney Love, Porcelain Black was approached to record backing vocals for Love's 2008 album.

Black grew up in and spent most of her life in various parts of Metro Detroit, Michigan.

Her mother is an accountant; her father was a hairstylist.

Her mother is of Polish descent and her father is Scottish-Albanian.

He owned a hair salon and brought her along to fashion shows and photoshoots.

Her parents separated when she was six years old.

After her mother remarried, they moved from Royal Oak and settled in Rochester where she attended high school at Bishop Foley Catholic High School.

At age fifteen, she was expelled for fighting and attended Rochester High School where she was also soon expelled, for the same reason.

Until the age of sixteen, when she was legally able to drop out, she feigned homeschooling.

Having lived in less affluent areas prior to the move, Black found that she did not fit in with her privileged classmates, becoming an outcast.

Her father died when she was sixteen.

Black had taken part in national competitive dancing, taking jazz, hip-hop, tap, and ballet lessons, since she was young, and, at one point, was training to perform on Broadway.

She also considered becoming a backup dancer.

While on a road trip in New York, Black was approached by her first manager, who told her to move to Los Angeles.

Three months later, she did so, found her manager, and was signed to Virgin Records two weeks later.

Recording under the pseudonym "Porcelain and the Tramps", Black worked with Tommy Henriksen and John Lowery in London while at Virgin.

However, she and the label could not agree on the music she made.

Virgin wanted Black to record pop music in the vein of Avril Lavigne, despite already knowing what kind of music she made when signing her.

She also faced skepticism from her collaborators, who questioned her desire to mix industrial rock sounds with dance pop.

Black began posting the songs she recorded on Myspace, gaining upwards of 10 million views in a matter of months.

She co-wrote and sang backup vocals for the song "Lunacy Fringe" by The Used.

She was approached by Courtney Love on MySpace to provide backing vocals for a solo album she was working on.

She was also featured on a song by the Street Drum Corps's "Action!".

"How Do You Love Someone?", co-written by Black, Billy Steinberg, and Josh Alexander around the time Black left Virgin, was recorded by Ashley Tisdale for her second album, Guilty Pleasure.

After many internal problems between the artist and record producer RedOne, Porcelain Black announced the partnership had come to an end, with anticipation of releasing her debut album in the vein of her Porcelain and the Tramps project in 2015.

She appeared in the music video for Jack White's "Freedom at 21".

As a songwriter, she is credited on songs performed by One Direction, Orianthi, The Used and Mexican pop singer Belinda, among others.

As a solo act, she has released four singles, "This Is What Rock n' Roll Looks Like", "Naughty Naughty", "One Woman Army", and "Fling", the first featuring guest vocals from Lil Wayne.

The first two songs charted on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart.

"One Woman Army" was a top-forty hit in France, Spain, and Wallonia, outselling all of her previous singles in France and becoming her first number-one hit on that country's iTunes chart.

After the release of her first single, Lil Wayne invited her on the second half of his I Am Music Tour as an opening act.

She made her first televised appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, performing "This Is What Rock n' Roll Looks Like".

Musically, she fuses industrial themes with pop music conventions such as electronic synths and a heavy reliance upon hooks.

She is best known for her guttural vocals and two-toned hair.

She considers her music the "love child" of Marilyn Manson and Britney Spears.