Tracy Bonham

Tracy Kristin Bonham (born March 16, 1967) is an American alternative rock musician.

Born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, she is a classically trained violinist and pianist, and is also a self-taught guitarist.

Tracy Kristin Bonham was born in Eugene, Oregon, on March 16, 1967, the only child of Donald Lewis Bonham and Lee Anne Leach.

Her father was the city editor of The Eugene Register-Guard, and her mother was a music teacher; the two had met whilst Leach was attending the University of Oregon.

Bonham's father died when she was two years old, and her mother remarried five years later to Edward Robert Robertson, a mortgage loan officer.

She was the youngest of the nine half and/or step-siblings she grew up with.

Bonham was trained as a classical musician; she began singing at the age of five, and playing the violin at nine.

When she was 16 years old, she enrolled at Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, but was expelled after three weeks for smoking cigarettes.

She later graduated at South Eugene High School and received a full scholarship to the University of Southern California for violin.

After becoming burnt out from composing, she transferred over to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts to study voice in 1987.

While there, she took up various jobs at places such as the Atlantic Fish Company, a cassette duplication service, and also wrote jingles for Pontiac and Toyota car dealerships.

In 1994, Bonham started writing music and released her first song, "The One", which appeared on the compilation album Girl, released through the Boston-based Curve of the Earth label.

Thereafter, she sent a four-song demo tape (featuring "The One") to Brett Milano, music critic of The Boston Phoenix, in June 1994; Milano praised the demo, and a major label bidding war occurred shortly thereafter.

After building up a local following, Bonham signed to Island Records in 1995.

In 1995, Bonham issued her debut EP, The Liverpool Sessions, through the CherryDisc label, which brought her additional local acclaim; after its release, she signed to Island Records.

Her debut album, The Burdens of Being Upright (1996), was a critical and commercial success and earned her two Grammy nominations, in addition to being certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) less than a year after its release.

The album's lead single, "Mother Mother", topped the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart in June 1996.

After recording at Fort Apache Studio in Cambridge for several months, in 1996 Bonham released her debut full-length album The Burdens of Being Upright.

Magazines such as Rolling Stone and People noted her bold approach to rock music.

The album went gold within six months and later that year she was nominated for the Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance (for "Mother Mother").

She then went on an extensive tour in support of the album.

The album's first single, "Mother Mother", reached number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart (later known as Alternative Airplay chart) in June 1996, and remained there for a month; Bonham subsequently became the first female solo artist to achieve this feat, and was the last one to do so until Lorde reached the same position with her single "Royals" in 2013.

The song's music video won the award for Best Video at the 1996 Boston Music Awards, and also received nominations at the MTV Music Video Awards in 1997 for Best New Artist in a Video. The second single, "The One", was a minor hit and peaked at No. 23 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and two different music video versions of the song were briefly in heavy rotation on video music channels MTV and VH1.

The third and final single, "Sharks Can't Sleep" failed to chart in the US, although it became her highest charting single in the United Kingdom, where it reached number 93.

After the mild success of her first album, Bonham commenced work on a second studio album in 1997 with Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake.

Bonham hoped to make an album that would better reflect her classical influences and serve as a more mature outing''.

The album, then known as Trails of a Dust Devil'', was finished in the spring of 1998, but executives at Island were unhappy with the album as they did not feel like it had a hit single.

Reluctantly, Bonham returned to writing new, more commercial-sounding songs, including "Behind Every Good Woman".

Satisfied, Island then set a release date for the album of October 1998.

However, in May 1998, Island Records' parent company, PolyGram, was purchased by beverage giant Seagram for $10.6 billion; as part of Seagram's purchase, PolyGram was merged into Universal Music Group, and Island Records was reconsolidated into The Island Def Jam Music Group umbrella label.

The restructurings delayed the release of the album to 1999.

Most of the people Bonham had worked with at Island had left the company during the merger, and the label's new management asked her to write another hit single; in response, Bonham wrote "Fake It".

Delays plagued the release of her second album, Down Here (2000), which failed to chart internationally; Bonham parted ways with Island a year after the album's release, after which she turned her attention to working with other musical artists, including The Blue Man Group when she appeared in their The Complex Rock Tour Live tour and live DVD in 2003.

The album was then pushed back to the spring of 2000, by which time it had been renamed ''Down Here.

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Down Here was released on April 18, 2000.

The album received generally positive reviews, but struggled to find an audience in a musical climate dominated by nu metal, and experienced virtually no radio airplay.

In 2004, Bonham signed to the Rounder Records imprint Zoë Records, with whom she issued her third album Blink the Brightest (2005).

She has since worked with various other record labels and released three more albums, Masts of Manhatta (2010), Wax & Gold (2015) and Modern Burdens (2017), the last of which is a re-recording of The Burdens of Being Upright.

She was the last female solo artist to top this chart until Lorde in 2013.