country

Jo Dee Messina

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Massachusetts-raised country singer behind a run of late-nineties radio staples — 'Bye, Bye' and 'Heads Carolina, Tails California' sung with unfussy force.

Jo Dee Messina was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, and raised in nearby Holliston alongside two sisters and a brother, in a household split between her father's Italian roots and her mother's Irish ones. Drawn early to Patsy Cline, Reba McEntire and the Judds, she was playing local clubs by sixteen with her siblings backing her on drums and guitar.

At nineteen she moved to Nashville, working temp jobs in computing and accounting while entering talent contests around the city. One win led to a regular slot on the radio show Live at Libby's, which caught the ear of producer Byron Gallimore. A deal with RCA followed but fell apart after a management shakeup there.

Gallimore was also working with a young Tim McGraw, and the two became friends. McGraw, backstage at a show, jokingly told a Curb Records executive they needed a redhead, and with producer James Stroud's help Messina signed to the label, with McGraw and Gallimore later co-producing her albums.

Her self-titled 1996 debut, built around the singles "Heads Carolina, Tails California" and "You're Not in Kansas Anymore," sold over half a million copies and went gold, and she played 215 shows that year even as poor business decisions and a management change pushed her toward bankruptcy.

She has since scored six number-one singles, become the first female country artist with three multi-week chart-toppers from one album, and sold more than five million records worldwide across two platinum and three gold-certified releases, earning two Grammy nominations along the way.

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