About the Artist
----------------
"This is my big girl record," declares Ingrid Michaelson of
Everybody, her second full-length CD out August 25. "It's almost
a loss of innocence. I'm 29 years old and I shouldn't worry if my
mom and dad know that I kissed a boy from listening to one of my
songs, but I remember on my first album I was like, 'Can I say
that?'" On that first album, 2007's critically lauded Girls and
Boys, the singer/songwriter infiltrated the mainstream airways
with smart love songs like "The Way I Am," a single that has gone
on to sell over one million copies worldwide. With Everybody, she
brings a newfound wisdom and maturity to her music, gleaned from
touring the world. "This album is very autobiographical, it's
about the past year in a half of my life and choices that I've
made," Michaelson says. "I had other songs that weren't about
that and I purposely didn't put them on the album. If it didn't
fit the record I kicked it off!" Born in New York City and raised
by her mother, a sculptor, and her her, a classical composer,
Ingrid has artistry in her . At four she began taking piano
lessons but it wasn't until after she graduated college with a
degree in musical theatre and was touring the country in a
theater troupe that she began to write the dreamy,
pensive-but-poppy songs that would connect with millions. Her
music taps into universal themes like self-doubt, betrayal, and
of course love, but her spirit is fiercely indie; Ingrid's last
studio album, 2007's Girls and Boys, was released on the label
she founded, Cabin 24 Records. The record's soaring delicacy
caught the ear of Grey's Anatomy's music supervisor and after
featuring several of her songs in earlier episodes, Ingrid's
heart wrenching ode to emotional paralysis "Keep Breathing" was
chosen to soundtrack the show's 2007 season finale, which more
than 25 million teary-eyed fans watched. Afterwards, everyone
went Ingrid crazy: Her lyrics and name were #1 and #2 on Google's
most searched items list, Girls and Boys climbed the iTunes
charts and she began to earn national media attention. That fall,
when Ingrid's song "The Way I Am" was featured in Old Navy's
commercial, it propelled Girls and Boys into the Billboard Top
200 and the record hit #1 on both the Heatseeker and Alternative
New Artist Album charts. Ingrid's MySpace page registered 90,000
hits per day and she reached the #4 song overall on iTunes - all
unprecedented feats for an independent release. Since then,
Ingrid has continued to chart on the Billboard Top 200 multiple
times selling over 300,000 copies of Girls and Boys. Since the
release of Girls and Boys two short years ago, Ingrid has
appeared on Good Morning America, Live with Regis & Kelly, Late
Night With Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, NPR's
Talk of the Nation, Fuse TV and was a VH1 You Oughta Know artist.
She has also been the subject of print features in publications
as varied as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New
Yorker, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Billboard.
Ingrid's rise was so quick she didn't have time to ease into
touring. Within a few months the singer, who had never played
more than a few local shows at a time, found herself on tour with
Dave Matthews and Jason Mraz, as was selling out 1500-capacity
club venues on her own. Ingrid adjusted with typical alacrity and
good-humor, honing a performance style that's very much in
keeping with her quirky personality. Her sets routinely include
her now-plentiful list of hits plus witty covers of songs like
"Ice Ice Baby," and the theme song from The Fresh Prince of
Bel-Air. With all her heady success Ingrid could easily have gone
diva by now but that's not her style. Instead of lounging by a
hotel pool demanding s of green Jolly Ranchers or falling out
of clubs at four in the morning in foreign cities she amuses
herself by making up dances to Jordin Sparks songs with her
roommate, then putting them on YouTube. And she keeps herself
creatively fresh by insisting on a similar level of commitment to
individualism in the way she approaches her work. "I did most of
the vocals for the new record at Shelter Island studios but I
ended up re-doing them in my producer's closet, which is his
vocal booth," Ingrid says of her work with producer Dan Romer. "I
felt better being in there for some reason. I wrote [first
single] "Maybe" two months ago. It wasn't going to be on the
record. A song we threw together at the last minute ended up
being the single. The other single "Everybody" - we recorded the
drums at the fancy studio and sang at the fancy studio, but
everything has been redone at Dan's house anyway. When I was in
Dan's house there was no pressure." It's exactly this insistence
on keeping things unflinchingly honest, regardless of
professional success or personal heartache that defines Ingrid's
connection to her fans. She rose to fame by singing about her
faith in love, and now she's written an album that questions that
faith, which she knows is risky but she also knows its right.
"With the first album I was just learning how to use my tools.
Now I feel like I can sharpen my skills and say things how I want
to say them. Now I feel free to say things about myself that I
would have maybe been embarrassed about before. It's like a big
old therapy session."
