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Trace Adkins helped keep country's traditionalist flame burning during the crossover-happy late '90s, mixing classic honky tonk with elements of gospel, blues, and rock & roll. Adkins had a knack for songs about the home truths of life and love in working class America like "You're Gonna Miss This" and "Every Light in the House," but he also knew how to get the party started with numbers like "Ladies Love Country Boys" and "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk." And his deep, rich voice was powerfully expressive regardless of the themes. Adkins' debut album, 1996's Dreamin' Out Loud, showed his talent emerged fully formed, 2003's Comin' On Strong was a set of songs that balanced maturity with good times, and 2017's Something's Going On showed that after 20 years, his voice and his formula were still serving him well.

Trace Adkins was born in the small Louisiana town of Sarepta on January 13, 1962, and he took up the guitar when he was ten years old. When he was in high school, he began performing with a gospel quartet, New Commitment, who released a pair of albums for a small label. After graduating, he attended Louisiana Tech on a football scholarship, where he studied petroleum technology. However, in his freshman year, he suffered a severe injury to his knee and had to quit the team. Adkins dropped out before he could graduate, and spent over a decade working on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, while playing in a country band called Bayou in his spare time. During an accident at work, his pinky finger was severed, and at his request the doctors re-attached it at an angle so he could still play guitar. After several years of playing honky-tonks in the Texas-Louisiana-Arkansas triangle, he set out to try his luck in Nashville, moving to Music City in 1992. Adkins landed a development deal with Arista Nashville, but after six months the label lost interest. However, one of Arista Nashville's executives soon moved to Capitol Records, and when producer Scott Hendricks saw him play a show in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, he convinced the label to sign Adkins to a recording contract.

Adkins issued his debut album, Dreamin' Out Loud, in 1996, and it established him as a rising star. The lead single, "Every Light in the House," went to number three; "I Left Something Turned on at Home" hit number two; and "(This Ain't) No Thinkin' Thing" went all the way to number one. His 1997 follow-up album, Big Time, spawned another Top Five hit in "The Rest of Mine," and "Lonely Won't Leave Me Alone" just missed the Top Ten. However, it wasn't quite the commercial powerhouse of Dreamin' Out Loud; neither was its follow-up, 1999's More, which featured just one Top Ten single in the title track. Nonetheless, all three albums made the country Top Ten.

Released in 2001, Chrome brought Adkins into the Top Five of the country album charts for the first time, as the Top Ten lead single "I'm Tryin'" proved to be his biggest hit since "The Rest of Mine." In July of that year, Adkins was arrested for drunk driving and later pled guilty. The title track of Chrome belatedly climbed into the Top Ten in early 2003. Capitol released Greatest Hits Collection, Vol. 1 in July of 2003 and its companion DVD, Video Hits, in February 2004 with Adkins' fifth studio album, the December 2003 release Comin' on Strong, sandwiched in between. In 2005, Adkins had a major hit with "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" from his album Songs About Me. The album Dangerous Man was released a year later. Live in Concert appeared in 2007 as part of the Big Band Concert CD series. X (Ten) was issued in 2008. After the album was released, Adkins left Capitol and signed with Toby Keith's Show Dog imprint distributed by Universal. In May of 2010 he debuted his first single for the label, "This Ain't No Love Song." The album Cowboy's Back in Town was released in August of that year. Adkins saw some chart action from both the album and single; he supported them with an extended tour. While flying to a concert in Alaska on June 4, 2011, Adkins' home in Brentwood, Tennessee caught fire and burned to the ground. Though his wife, daughters, and a babysitter were at home during the catastrophe, no one was hurt. The title track of his 2011 album, Proud to Be Here, was written by Chris Wallin, Aaron Barker, and Ira Dean with Adkins in mind. The album was preceded by the single "Gone Fishin'," which peaked at six on the Billboard country charts.

Proud to Be Here wound up debuting at three on the Billboard 2003 but only generated one other charting single, "Million Dollar View," which scraped the country charts at 38. Two years later, Adkins returned with Love Will..., an album that refashioned the singer as a romantic crooner. It was released in May of 2013, debuting at 14 on the Billboard Top 200. Despite this high initial position, the first single "Watch the World End" didn't become a hit and neither did the album itself. In September, Showdog and Adkins announced that they were parting ways. A month later, Adkins released the Christmas album The King's Gift on Caliburn Records.

Adkins signed with the Broken Bow subsidiary Wheelhouse in 2015, releasing the single "Jesus and Jones" in early 2016. He continued to work on his debut for the label throughout 2016, releasing the single "Lit" in the summer. The album, titled Watered Down, appeared in March 2017. In 2021, Adkins celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of his first album with a streaming virtual concert event, Trace 25: Still Dreamin' Out Loud, where he shared stories about his life in music and played a number of his best-known songs. Nine songs from the show would be released as a digital album by Universal. The same year, Adkins brought out a double album of fresh material, The Way I Wanna Go, which featured guest appearances from Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, Melissa Etheridge, Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg, and Pitbull. ~ Steve Huey & Mark Deming

An unrepentant believer in the power of classic rock and R&B, Melissa Etheridge has managed to keep her traditionalism vital decades after the release of her eponymous debut in 1988. With a raspy delivery that recalled prime Rod Stewart and faith in the restorative power of rock learned from Bruce Springsteen, Etheridge distinguishes her lean, straight-ahead heartland rock with emotionally direct songwriting. She sharpened this skill on Melissa Etheridge, Brave and Crazy, and Never Enough, records from the early '90s that generated such rock radio hits as "Bring Me Some Water," "Similar Features," "No Souvenirs," and "Ain't It Heavy," the latter winning Etheridge her first Grammy. Early in 1993, Etheridge became one of the first prominent rockers to come out publicly as a lesbian, an event that raised her public profile, helping her fourth album Yes I Am to become a multi-platinum blockbuster, spinning off the hits "I'm the Only One" and "Come to My Window." From that point forward, Etheridge was a roots rock institution, recording and working steadily, occasionally re-entering the spotlight -- she won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I Need to Wake Up" in 2007 -- while taking pains to stretch herself creatively, as when she dedicated herself to R&B on 2016's Memphis Rock and Soul, while also committing herself to activism: her 2024 docuseries I'm Not Broken focused on imprisoned women suffering from addiction.

Born May 29, 1961, in Leavenworth, Kansas, Etheridge first picked up the guitar at the age of eight and began penning her own songs shortly thereafter. Playing in local bands throughout her teens, Etheridge then attended the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The up-and-coming singer/songwriter and guitarist dropped out after a year before making her way to Los Angeles in the early '80s to take a shot at a career in music. At this point, Etheridge's music was slightly more bluesy than her subsequently renowned folk-pop style, as a demo of original compositions caught the attention of Bill Leopold, who signed on as Etheridge's manager. Soon after, steady gigs began coming her way, including a five-night-a-week residency at the Executive Suite in Long Beach, which led to a bidding war between such major record labels as A&M, Capitol, EMI, and Warner Bros., but it was Island Records that Etheridge decided to go with.

Etheridge's first recorded work appeared on the forgotten soundtrack to the Nick Nolte prison movie Weeds before her self-titled debut was issued in 1988. The album quickly drew comparisons to such heavyweights as Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp, as it spawned the hit single "Bring Me Some Water" and earned gold certification. In the wake of the album's success, Etheridge performed at the Grammy Awards the following year and contributed vocals to Don Henley's The End of the Innocence. She managed to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump with 1989's Brave and Crazy, which followed the same musical formula as its predecessor and proved to be another gold-certified success. It would be nearly three years before Etheridge's next studio album appeared, however, and 1992 signaled the arrival of Never Enough, which proved to be more musically varied.

But it was Etheridge's fourth release that would prove to be her massive commercial breakthrough. Ex-Police producer Hugh Padgham guided the album, which spawned two major MTV/radio hits with "I'm the Only One" and "Come to My Window" (the latter of which featured a video with actress Juliette Lewis); the album would sell a staggering six million copies in the U.S. during a single-year period and earned a 1995 Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocalist. But subsequent releases failed to match the success of Yes I Am, including 1995's Your Little Secret, 1999's Breakdown, and 2001's Skin, the latter of which dealt with her separation from Julie Cypher. (Cypher gave birth to the couple's two children via artificial insemination; CSN&Y's David Crosby was the father.)

Etheridge's autobiography, The Truth Is: My Life in Love and Music, was released in 2002, and 2004's Lucky was her celebration of a new romance. Later that same year Etheridge revealed that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. But early detection allowed for recovery, and she gave strength to many of those stricken by the disease with a powerful performance of Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" at the 47th annual Grammys in February 2005. That September, Etheridge released Greatest Hits: The Road Less Traveled, a compilation of career highlights and new material. It featured a cover of Tom Petty's "Refugee" as well as "Piece of My Heart" and a new song dedicated to breast cancer survivors. In 2007, Etheridge released her first studio album of new material in three years, The Awakening, on Island, following it a year later with a holiday album, A New Thought for Christmas, also on Island. Fearless Love appeared early in 2010. Her 12th studio album, 4th Street Feeling (named for the main drag in her hometown of Leavenworth, Kansas) was released in 2012; it marked the first occasion in her career when Etheridge played all the guitar parts on one of her recordings. Two years later, she went independent with her 13th album, This Is M.E., an ambitious collection that saw her collaborating with several different producers including R&B specialists Roccstar and Jon Levine; the album debuted at 21 on Billboard's Top 200. Two years later, Etheridge switched to Concord's revived Stax imprint to pay tribute to classic '60s soul on Memphis Rock and Soul; the record debuted at 34 on Billboard's Top 200.

Etheridge designed her 2019 album The Medicine Show as a restorative, healing record. It was released on her M.E. Records imprint in April 2019. She released One Way Out, a collection of unreleased songs written in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in 2021. In October 2022, Etheridge launched My Window -- A Journey Through Life, a limited-run solo Broadway musical; the production was accompanied by the release of an EP, Melissa Etheridge on Broadway.

Etheridge returned in 2024 with I'm Not Broken, a docuseries exploring the singer's work with incarcerated women that was soundtracked by the album I'm Not Broken: Live from Topeka Correctional Facility. ~ Greg Prato