Queen Latifah

After bonding over their shared musical creativity, Joseph and Salih decided to form a band. Before their first performance, Joseph invited Thomas to join.

The trio named itself Twenty One Pilots and began playing a variety of venues around Columbus. The band became known for its attention-grabbing costumes and on-stage antics. Joseph’s mother helped promote the shows by giving away tickets outside of Ohio State.

Twenty One Pilots released its debut, self-titled album independently in 2009, recording from the basement of the house where its members lived at the time. The album peaked at number 139 on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 115,000 copies.

Just two years later, in 2011, Thomas and Salih left the group to focus on school and work, respectively. Twenty One Pilots became a duo, with Joseph on vocals and Josh Dun on drums. The new Twenty One Pilots self-released its second album, Regional at Best, that July. Just a few months later, the band played its first sold-out show at Newport Music Hall, catching the attention of several record labels. The band then embarked on the Regional at Best Tour alongside the rock band Challenger, documenting the journey on YouTube.

In April 2012, Twenty One Pilots announced a deal with Fueled by Ramen, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. The band released its first record under the label, an EP titled Three Songs, in July. The next month, the band joined Neon Trees and Walk the Moon on tour.

Twenty One Pilots’ third album dropped in January 2013. Vessel climbed to number 21 on the Billboard 200 charts and number 10 in the Alternative Albums Chart. The single, “Holding on to You,” became the band’s first charting single and reached number 11 on the Billboard Alternatives Songs charts.

Later that year, Twenty One Pilots joined Panic! at the Disco as a supporting act on Fall Out Boy’s Save Rock and Roll Arena Tour. The band continued to tour and play festivals throughout 2014.

In March 2015, Twenty One Pilots announced its upcoming album, Blurryface. The third single, “Stressed Out,” dropped that April. It peaked at number two on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and became the band’s biggest-selling single. The music video was also a hit, surpassing 2.5 billion views on YouTube.

Blurryface was released in May 2015 and became a breakout success. It was the band’s first number-one album, selling 134,000 copies in the first week. It’s also the first album ever to have every single track certified at least Gold by the RIAA. Blurryface won Top Rock Album at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards. Twenty One Pilots also took home the award for Top Rock Artist that year.

Twenty One Pilots’ popularity continued to surge throughout 2016. In June, the duo released “Heathens,” a song for the DC Comics film Suicide Squad. The song peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. This made Twenty One Pilots the third artist after The Beatles and Elvis Presley to have two Top 5 singles charting at the same time.

Since the success of Blurryface, Twenty One Pilots has released two more albums. Trench dropped in 2018, followed by Scaled and Icy in 2021. The latter is the band’s first album to feature Joseph’s younger brother Jay, who performs vocals on three tracks. Both albums were received positively by critics and fans alike. In 2022, Twenty One Pilots took the show on the road with The Icy Tour, to promote and support Scaled and Icy in North America.

Be sure to catch the band live on their newly announced Bandito world tour as well.

Despite having one of the silliest names in rock (and that's saying a hell of a lot), there was a period of time in which Hootie & the Blowfish were one of the biggest and most inescapable bands in America. Not bad for a band who formed because Darius Rucker liked singing in the shower. The band formed in 1986, when all four members met each other as freshmen at the University of South Carolina. Rucker and lead guitarist Mark Ryan shared the same dorm, and after Ryan heard Rucker singing in the shower, the two young men decided to start playing music together, covering a number of songs as The Wolf Brothers. Before long they teamed up with fellow freshmen Dean Felber and Brentley Smith on bass and drums respectively, and took a combination of two nicknames of their friends from university as their name. The first incarnation of Hootie & the Blowfish had formed.

However, that incarnation of the band wouldn't last, as Smith left the group on good terms in 1989. Jim Sonefield joined as his replacement and by 1991, the band had released their first of two demo tapes, the second of which was released a year later. With five years of preparation behind them the demos were an astonishing success, leading to the band having to independently press 50'000 copies of their debut EP “Kootchypop” in 1993 to meet demand. The EP's success lead to a major label record deal with Atlantic Records, and even though the band were riding a huge wave of hype, nobody could have predicted what happened next. Their debut album, “Cracked Rear View”, was released in July 1995, and was the kind of success that seemed reserved for Led Zeppelin at their prime.

It sold ten and half million copies in its first year of release, making it the highest selling album of its year by a mile, and would later go on to sell a further five and a half million copies by the end of the decade. It stands to this day as the joint 16th best selling album of all time in the United States, and four of its singles were huge hits on the pop charts. Only such a mind-boggling debut could make a follow up selling four million copies with a top 15 hit single seem like a disappointment, but Hootie & the Blowfish had nothing left to prove. They spent the rest of the 90's and most of the 2000's as one of the biggest draws in rock, selling out arenas wherever they went, until after a further three albums they went on semi-hiatus in 2008. To this day, they reunite for sporadic live shows, most notably a yearly set of shows at South Carolina's Family Circle Cup Stadium, and remain a live band to be reckoned with. As one of the true legends of rock music in the 90's, Hootie & the Blowfish come highly recommended.

Keith Urban began his musical endeavors at an early age entering in local competitions and Country Musical Festivals when he was only 10. He grew up idolizing Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knophler and Lindsay Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac fame and began closely modeling his style after these influences. For the next couple of years Urban made consistent appearances on several Australian Country TV programs and went on to win the golden guitar award at the Tamworth Country Music Festival with collaborator Jenny Wilson.

His debut album was released through EMI on 1 October 1991 and managed to reach number 98 on the Australian Album Charts. Apart from pursuing a solo career Urban was involved in writing songs for other musicians as well as backing them on tour. Urban toured alongside legendary Australian Country musician Slim Dusty as a backup guitarist. During this period he also contributed backing vocals to a live INXS album.

After Urban moved to the United States country hub, Nashville, he collaborated with Alan Jackson for the song Mercury Blues and helped pin the christmas song “Jesus Gets Jealous of Santa Claus” for Toby Keith. In 1997 Urban formed a Country three piece band called The Ranch with fellow members Peter Clarke and Jerry Flowers. Urban contributed lead vocals, guitar, ganjo, and keyboards on their one and only self-titled release. Despite the groups short lived career two singles from the album appeared on the country charts.

Around this period Urban became an ardent user of cocaine, which subsequently led him into rehab. Once Urban became drug-free his career received a significant jumpstart and with the release of his self-titled American debut he reached number 145 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and had a number 1 hit with Go-Go’s singer Charlotte Caffey. His success was amplified with his 2002 release “Golden Road”. The opening track on that album “Somebody Like You” stayed at number 1 on the charts for six weeks. His songs “Who Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me” and “ You’ll Think of Me” both topped the charts with the latter earning him a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.

Urban has produced five more albums since “Golden Road” all which have done extraordinarily well with the public and has embarked on multiple world-tours with the likes of Bryan Adams, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and Sugarland.

In addition to his music career Urban has acted as a judge on the Australian version of The Voice and replaced Steven Tyler as a judge for American Idol.

Of all the surreal ways that artists made their name before they were famous, Harlem’s own Teyana Taylor must have one of the weirdest. In 2007, she was featured on MTV’s parade of privilege and materialism My Super Sweet 16, a show in which young girls plan their ostentatious and ridiculously expensive sixteenth birthday parties. Now, I realize that a lot of you might make up your mind about Taylor as an artist based on that fact alone, and it’s truly understandable.

However, if you look a little closer, you’ll see there’s a lot to respect about Taylor.

Despite her first appearance in the spotlight, she’s absolutely the real deal. Before the episode had even aired she’d signed to Pharrell Williams’ Star Trak Entertainment, making her Snoop Dogg’s label mate. But the year 2007 was out, she was a featured dancer in the video for Jay Z’s single “Blue Magic”, and she had her first solo single, “Google Me”, out by February 2008. With such a strong start it’s strange to think that the single tanked as hard as it did. However Taylor, even at 17 years old, was not an artist to let things get in her way.

The album that “Google Me” was trailing, “From A Planet Called Harlem” was released for free the following year as a mixtape and Taylor tried her hand at acting, with more success. In 2010, however, Kanye West called Taylor into his studio, hours before his record “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” was due, ostensibly to look at some fashion pieces Kanye had in mind for the album’s promotion. However, through sheer force of personality and persuasion, Taylor ended up writing and recording the intro and chorus for the song “Dark Fantasy”.

Her career immediately blossomed after that, and two years later when Taylor was having problems with Star Trak, West was so impressed that he signed her to his label GOOD Music after hearing her independently released mixtape “The Misunderstanding Of Teyana Taylor”. She popped up all over GOOD Music’s debut compilation album “Cruel Summer” and in 2014, her debut studio album proper was released. The album was a critical success and a fantastic starting point for an artist with the world at her feet, where she goes next is a truly exciting prospect, and we should all tag along for the ride.