Fergie...

"Happy 37th Birthday"

Fergie...

Stacy Ann Ferguson began her career in 1983 as the voice of Sally Brown in the children's cartoon series Charlie Brown. Shortly afterwards, at the age of eight, she made her first appearance on the variety television program Kids Incorporated. During the following five years, Ferguson appeared on over 100 episodes of Kids Incorporated, some of which alongside Renee Sands, with whom she would later reunite in the band Wild Orchid. -Tv.com

Five years after forming the girl group Wild Orchid with fellow Kids Incorporated alum Renee Sandstrom and childhood friend Stefanie Ridel, Fergie and her bandmates release their self-titled debut album. "We were non-categorizable," she tells EW. "Too urban for pop radio and too pop for urban radio." In 1998, the group opens for 'N Sync on a string of tour dates, where Fergie briefly dates Justin Timberlake. "He was 16 and I was 23," she recalls to Australia's Courier Mail. "It was before he got real heavy with Britney." Wild Orchid releases another album two years later before calling it quits in 2001.

After experimenting with drugs in L.A.'s underground music scene, Fergie becomes a crystal meth addict. She shrinks to 90 lbs. and admits to friends and family that she has a problem. "I wasn't liking who I was," she tells PEOPLE in 2006. "So I stopped cold turkey and came clean with everybody." That May, she approaches the Black Eyed Peas's will.i.am and asks him to work on her proposed solo album. He does one better, getting her to sing on the band's upcoming single "Shut Up." -People.com

A few years after the group's split, Ferguson joined the Black Eyed Peas in time to record 2003's Elephunk. She became central to the group's mainstream success ("Let's Get It Started," "My Humps") and released her first solo album, The Dutchess, during September 2006. -Music.aol.com

Ferguson's debut solo album, The Dutchess, was released in September 2006. The Dutchess spawned six hits for Ferguson, beginning with "London Bridge", then "Fergalicious", "Glamorous", "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Clumsy", and "Finally". Ferguson scored her fifth consecutive Top 5 hit from The Dutchess after "Clumsy" reached a peak position of number five on the Billboard Hot 100. On November 18, 2007, Ferguson won the Pop or Rock "Favorite Female Artist" at the American Music Awards. In addition, her song "Big Girls Don't Cry" also earned Ferguson a Grammy nomination for "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance". In December 2007, Blender picked Ferguson as their woman of the year. In 2007, The Black Eyed Peas embarked on the Black Blue & You World Tour, visiting more than 20 countries.

Ferguson returned to acting in 2006, appearing as a lounge singer in the Poseidon remake and later had supporting roles in 2007's Grindhouse and the 2009 musical film Nine filmed in 2008. -Wikipedia.com

In addition to her music, Fergie has recognized for her good looks. She was selected as one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” in 2004. In 2007, Fergie was featured in a series of advertisements for Candies, a shoes, clothing, and accessories company. A big fan of fashion, Fergie has done more than just model. She also inked a deal to design two handbag collections for Kipling North America. Returning to acting roots. -Biography.com

Ferguson is currently married to actor Josh Duhamel who appears on the television show Las Vegas. Ferguson actually partook in an episode of Las Vegas titled "Montecito Lancers". -Lyricsmania.com

On August 27, 2010, it was announced that Slash was filming a music video for the song. Slash stated that "[The] concept is twisted; Fergie's idea." The video for "Beautiful Dangerous" premiered on Vevo on October 28, 2010. The video first depicts Slash at a strip bar. Fergie - apperently, a stripper herself - seems to take an interest and flirts with him. After secretly dropping a drug into his drink, they leave the bar and head to a hotel. Slash, having been drugged, is held captive by Fergie and tied to a bed. Fergie mounts, kisses, and threatens him with a knife. In the end, she stabs Slash, killing him. 

During an interview, where Slash goes through each of his album tracks, he stated:

“

I got hip to Fergie being probably as good or better a rock singer than she is a pop singer. I heard her do Barracuda, the old Heart song, and I was like, fuckin’ wow! I ended up doing a couple of shows with her where she sang Barracuda and Sweet Child O’ Mine. She’s one of the most phenomenal fucking rock ‘n’ roll singers, male or female, I’ve ever heard.'

”

Slash told The sun: "The track began as a piece of music I'd written as a score for a strip bar scene and it made me think of [Fergie]. I'm a guy and there's nothing sexier than seeing a cute girl sing rock 'n' roll." -Wikipedia.com

Shinedown New Album..."Amaryllis"

Music Video for today in honor of

Shinedown's New Album Release...

"Bully"

How do you follow up a hit? Or, rather, how do you follow up an album that spawned six No. 1 singles and spent 120 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200? For Shinedown, whose third album, 2008's "The Sound of Madness," achieved that exact success, the best method was to just move forward. 

"You go into it with the idea that you're not going to copy what you've already done," Shinedown singer Brent Smith says of the rock band's new effort, "Amaryllis," which arrives March 27 on Atlantic. "It's the next step. You raise the bar higher. And ultimately we're quite a fearless band when it comes to making albums and songwriting."

The band -- Smith, drummer Barry Kerch, guitarist Zach Myers and bassist Eric Bass -- toured for more than two years for "The Sound of Madness," propelled by its continual sales growth and consistent radio play. It has sold 1.3 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and of its six No. 1 singles, "Second Chance" reached the top five on Billboard's Active, Alternative, Rock, Adult Top 40 and Top 40 charts and "If You Only Knew" hit the top 10 on Active, Alternative, Rock and Adult Top 40. 

Following the Carnival of Madness outing, for which it toured 10,000-capacity venues, Shinedown went out on an acoustic trek of 3,000-capacity venues called Everything and Anything. Before hitting the road for the final leg of the Carnival tour in 2010, the group penned two songs: "Her Name Is Alice," for the "Almost Alice" compilation of music inspired by the film "Alice in Wonderland," and "Diamond Eyes (Boom-Lay Boom-Lay Boom)," for the soundtrack to "The Expendables." Then, in February 2011, the band began writing songs for another album, and its time on the road inspired new material fairly quickly. 

"It was the first time I brought the guys into the actual lyric writing," Smith says, "because a lot of the subject matter was about the situations we were in during the two years we toured."

During the first half of 2011, the band wrote and demoed 33 songs, with the intention of creating something different from previous work. "I wasn't even thinking about any of the material on 'The Sound of Madness,'" Smith says, "because we'd already toured it, and it's forever-it's out there . . . It was time to write a brand-new record. There were way more things to talk about." 

There is a link between the two discs, however. "Amaryllis" was recorded in Los Angeles with producer and Warner Bros. chairman Rob Cavallo, who also helmed "The Sound of Madness." "If it's not broke, don't fix it," Smith says. 

The making of "Amaryllis," which was finished in February, has been chronicled in an e-book that'll be released the same day as the album. "For Your Sake: Inside the Making of Shinedown's Amaryllis" comprises nearly 40 interactive pages meant to supplement the album, and for now is only available for the iPad. For the label, the book is an opportunity to jump onboard with a new technology as well as engage fans. "It's going to be a new trend," Atlantic VP of rock marketing and A&R Anthony Delia says. "This is a very important initiative for Atlantic." 

First single "Bully" arrived Jan. 2 as part of a "phase-one plan to reinvigorate the core Shinedown fans," according to Delia. It's No. 12 on Alternative. A video for follow-up "Unity" bowed online March 12 on AOL Music/Noisecreep, while the song will go to radio later this spring. On March 26 the group plays "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" 

"'The Sound of Madness' set the stage both domestically and internationally for us to really solidify Shinedown as a household name with 'Amaryllis,'" Delia says. "The overall intention with Shinedown is to satiate our core audience while finding ways to get to new potential fans-it's all-inclusive. We did it very successfully with The Sound of Madness and plan to do it again, even bigger." 

Part of this expanded plan involves releasing Amaryllis in nearly 30 countries simultaneously. Shinedown, managed by Bill McGathy and Gwyther Bultman of Indegoot Entertainment, recently signed an international deal with Roadrunner Records, which will release the album in territories outside the United States. Even the touring plan for Shinedown (@Shinedown) leans heavily global. The band, currently on a U.S. promotional radio tour, will head overseas after its headlining spring run in North America. Destinations include India, New Zealand, South America, Mexico and Australia, and the trek is expected to carry the band into 2013. 

"It's going to be an international year," Smith says. "We spend so long making albums because we want to tour on them for a long time. We take into consideration the live aspect [while recording], and we pull it off live. We know what we're doing." -Billboard.com