IN: Miranda Leigh Lambert was born November 10, 1983, to Rick and Bev (nee Hughes) Lambert in Longview, Texas, and was raised in Lindale, Texas. She was named after her great-grandmother, Lucy Miranda.She has one younger brother, Luke Lambert. She has English, Irish and Native American ancestry.

On September 15, 2003, she signed with Epic Records. Her debut single, "Me and Charlie Talking", co-written by her father and Heather Little, was released in summer of 2004 as the lead single to her debut album, titled Kerosene. The album comprised 12 songs, 11 of which she wrote or co-wrote. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums charts, and eventually gained a Platinum certification by the RIAA for shipments of over one million copies, selling more than 930,000 copies up to July 2008. Overall, the album produced four Top 40 singles on the Billboard country charts, including the title track which was a Top 20 hit. Lambert also toured with Keith Urban and George Strait in early 2006. In 2007, she toured with Dierks Bentley and Toby Keith.  Lambert's second album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, was released on May 9, 2007. She wrote eight of the album's 11 tracks, including its four singles. Much of the track "Gunpowder & Lead," the album's third single and her highest-charting single, was written while she was taking a concealed handgun class in her home town. Fady Joudah of The New Yorker said the album proved "she has talent and charisma on a par with Dolly Parton, another blond beauty who was once underestimated."  In 2005, at the 40th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas, Lambert won the Cover Girl "Fresh Face of Country Music Award". She was also nominated for the Country Music Association's Horizon Award in 2005; in 2007, Lambert also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her single "Kerosene". She also won the Top New Female Vocalist award at the 2007 ACM (Academy of Country Music) Awards. At the 2008 ACM (Academy of Country Music) Awards, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend won Album of the Year.

Were there any good singles on it

OUT: Gunpowder & Lead,


IN: Michael Anthony Sobolewski (born June 20, 1954 and legally shortened his name to Michael Anthony in 1978), is an American musician who is currently the bass player in the rock supergroup Chickenfoot and the Circle. Anthony is best known as the former bass player for the hard rock band Van Halen. Anthony is known for his stage antics, his effects-laden live solos, his number of custom-made bass guitars, including a Jack Daniel's model shaped like a whiskey bottle, and his background vocals in Van Halen. He also has a signature Schecter Guitar Research bass-guitar series.

As early as 1996, rumors periodically surfaced that Anthony had been fired from Van Halen, despite claims to the contrary. He continued working with the band. These rumors persisted until his final departure after the 2004 reunion tour with Hagar.  Anthony's involvement in recording the 1998 album Van Halen III was dramatically less than previous albums. Anthony played bass on only three songs, with Eddie Van Halen playing the bass parts for the remainder. Anthony is credited as a songwriter for the album along with the rest of the band, as is always the case for Van Halen albums. Anthony performed with the band for the 1998 tour, and was credited on messages from the band thereafter. He participated in the band's three reunion efforts with David Lee Roth in 2000 and 2001. Anthony's name was also credited in a few band newsletters and appeared in band interviews during this time. Sometime after this, Anthony disappeared from public view until the 2004 reunion.  In interviews, Eddie and Alex Van Halen suggested they were jamming and writing/recording new material during this time period but appeared to be working without Anthony.  Anthony began periodic appearances with Sammy Hagar during his solo tours. He usually played as part of both the Waboritas and Los Tres Gusanos, two of Hagar's bands. During 2002's David Lee Roth/Sammy Hagar tour, both Michael Anthony and ex-Van Halen vocalist Gary Cherone made guest appearances at concerts, sometimes together.  In 2002, Anthony, Hagar, Neal Schon, Deen Castronovo, and Joe Satriani formed the "supergroup" Planet Us and Anthony began making more frequent performances at Sammy Hagar concerts. Planet Us recorded two songs, including "Psycho Vertigo," which was intended for the original Spider-Man soundtrack but ultimately did not make the album. That and the other Planet Us song written for the band, "Peephole," were later released on the 2008 Sammy Hagar solo album Cosmic Universal Fashion.

Did he work with any famous bands?

OUT: Anthony began periodic appearances with Sammy Hagar during his solo tours. He usually played as part of both the Waboritas and Los Tres Gusanos, two of Hagar's bands.


IN: Maya Angelou ( ( listen); born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 - May 28, 2014) was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences.

Angelou wrote a total of seven autobiographies. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked the first time a well-known African-American autobiographer had written a third volume about her life. Her books "stretch over time and place", from Arkansas to Africa and back to the U.S., and take place from the beginnings of World War II to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at the age of 85. Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies "in light of the first", with Caged Bird receiving the highest praise. Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts". Angelou used the same editor throughout her writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011 and has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors." Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's kind of famous among publishers".  Angelou's long and extensive career also included poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, directing, acting, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she was chosen by President Bill Clinton to recite her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" during his inauguration in 1993.  Angelou's successful acting career included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, including her appearance in the television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original script by a black woman to be produced, and she was the first African-American woman to direct a major motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.

What was the name of another autobiography she wrote?

OUT:
Angelou wrote a total of seven autobiographies.