Who is Michelle Wright? The entertainment and music world knows her as a Canadian
country music artist. She is one of the country's most widely recognized and awarded female country singers of the 1990s, winning the
Canadian Country Music Association's Fans' Choice Award twice (1993 and 1995).
Brian Ferriman of
Savannah Records has been her manager for over 20 years.
Wright's primary success has been in her native Canada, where she has charted more than twenty-five singles, including the Number One hits "
Take It Like a Man", "
One Time Around", "
Guitar Talk", "
One Good Man", "
Nobody's Girl" and "
Crank My Tractor". She also had chart success in the United States in the early 1990s, landing in the Top 40 on the
Billboard Hot Country Songs charts with "New Kind of Love" at #32, "Take It Like a Man" at #10 and "He Would Be Sixteen" at #31.
Career
Early life
Michelle Wright was born on July 1, 1961 in
Chatham, Ontario,
Canada. Wright grew up in the small Canadian town of
Merlin, Ontario where she took after her parents, who were both local performers. By 1980, when Wright was in college studying counseling for the mentally disadvantaged, she joined a local band with whom she performed until 1983 when she started her own band.
[1] She would perform with her own band until 1988.
[1] In 1985, while performing with her band, Wright signed a record deal with
Savannah Records. The next year she released her debut single, "I Want to Count on You", which peaked at #48 on the Canadian
RPM Country Tracks chart. Wright's debut album,
Do Right By Me, was issued in 1988 and produced seven more singles including Wright's cover of the 1974
Andy Kim hit, "
Rock Me Gently", which reached #7 on the Canadian
RPM Country Tracks chart. The album's success in Canada led to a record contract with
Arista Nashville, becoming one of the label's flagship artists.
[2]
1990 – 1993: Breakthrough success
In April 1990, Wright's first American single, "New Kind of Love", was issued and became her first top five hit in Canada, in addition to peaking at #32 on the
Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in the United States. Her second album,
Michelle Wright, was released in July 1990. To support the album, Wright was added as an opening act to
Kenny Rogers 1991 tour.
[3] The album became a success in Canada and led Wright to be awarded Female Artist of the Year by the
Canadian Country Music Association in 1990. The following year she was awarded Album of the Year for
Michelle Wright, Single of the Year for "New Kind of Love", and Female Artist of the Year again by the Canadian Country Music Association.
[4]
The failure of the follow up singles to "New Kind of Love" forced Wright to relocate to
Nashville, Tennessee in 1991 to spend more advancing her career.
[2] When in Nashville, Wright began to record her third album,
Now and Then, released in May 1992. The album's first single, "
Take It Like a Man", became an instant hit, reaching #1 in Canada on the
RPM Country Tracks chart and #10 in the United States on the
Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. In Canada, the song also crossed over to the adult contemporary charts, peaking at #18. The song received the Single of the Year award from the Canadian Country Music Association in late 1992.
In 1993, the album gave Wright the award for Top New Female Vocalist from the
Academy of Country Music and an appearance on the
CBS television special,
Women of Country, where she performed "Take It Like a Man" and the
Mary Chapin Carpenter song "The Hard Way" with several other artists including Carpenter.
Now and Then went on to produce six more singles including the Canadian number one hits "
One Time Around" and "
Guitar Talk". The album also contained the single "He Would Be Sixteen", which reached #31 on the U.S.
Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart and #3 on the Canadian
RPM Country Tracks chart and was awarded Single of the Year by the Canadian Country Music Association in 1993. Also in 1993, Wright won the Fans' Choice Award from Canadian Country Music Association, which she would also win in 1995.
1994 – 1999: Further success
In 1994, Wright released the first single from her upcoming album, "
One Good Man",
which became her fourth number one single in Canada, however it failed to reach the top 40 in the United States. Wright's fourth album,
The Reasons Why, was released in September 1994 in Canada only. The album was also released in Europe after a Wright completed a successful tour in mid-1994.
[5] In early 1995, Wright embarked on a 40-city tour in Canada, which at that time the most extensive tour in the history of the country music business in Canada.
[2]
In August 1996, Wright released her fifth album,
For Me It's You, following the release of the first single "
Nobody's Girl",
which reached #1 on the Canadian
RPM Country Tracks and #57 on the U.S.
Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. The album marked Wright's first album to be released in the American market in four years.
[6] The album went on to be successful in Canada, producing three top five singles with "
Crank My Tractor", "The Answer Is Yes", and "What Love Looks Like". The album, however, was not a success in the United States and in a 1997 interview with
Jam!, Wright admitted that she was "very disappointed" and "not happy with what they [U.S. radio] did with this album".
[7]
During 1997, Wright was awarded the C.F. Martin Humanitarian Award by the Canadian Country Music Association for her international work with the
Special Olympics, her successful fundraising efforts for St. Joseph's Hospital in Chatham, Ontario, the hospital where she was born, and her support for the
Manitoba flood relief fund.
[2]
In 1999, U.S. radio welcomed Wright back when her 1997 duet with pianist
Jim Brickman was released to radio. The song, "Your Love", failed at country radio, but gave Wright her only American adult contemporary hit when the song peaked at #19 on the
Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart.
[2] Despite the song's success at AC radio, it would be Wright's last charting single in the United States.
In October 1999, Wright's first greatest hits album,
The Greatest Hits Collection, in Canada. The album included two new songs, "I Surrender" and "When I Found You", both of which were top ten hits on the Canadian
RPM Country Tracks chart. In 2000, Arista Nashville released the
American version of her 1999 greatest hits album in the United States. The album contained a different tracklist than the Canadian version.
2000 – present: Success today
In 2002, Wright was transferred to
RCA Records/
ViK. Recordings, where she returned after a six year hiatus from releasing a new studio album to release her sixth studio album,
Shut Up and Kiss Me, in June 2002. The album took Wright towards a more pop driven direction than her previous work.
[8] Wright co-wrote eight of the album's twelve songs and recorded songs by successful songwriters such as
Shelly Peiken, who wrote pop singer
Christina Aguilera's 1999 hit, "
What a Girl Wants".
[8] Shut Up and Kiss Me also contained a more pop-oriented version of her 2000 single "I Surrender", this version had been used for the song's music video and pop radio release.
In 2004, Wright started her annual
Christmas tour,
Dreaming of a Wright Christmas. A year later Wright signed with
Icon Records and in October 2005, she released her first Christmas album,
A Wright Christmas in Canada. The album featured covers of eleven Christmas song and one new song, "I Know Santa's Been Here", written by Canadian country singer
Patricia Conroy. The song was issued as the album's first single in December 2005.
A Wright Christmas was released digitally in the United States 2007 and Europe in 2008.
In June 2006, Wright returned to country music by releasing her first new album in four years,
Everything and More in Canada. In 2007,
Everything and More was made available digitally in United States.
Other work
Wright appeared as a country music star in an episode in Season 4 of the Canadian TV series
Due South. The episode, entitled "Mountie Sings the Blues," centres on the Mountie's attempts to protect Wright's character, Tracy Jenkins, from a stalker. She sings "Nobody's Girl" at the conclusion of the episode.
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Who is Jennifer Lynette Sterger? The entertainment and acting world knows her as Jenn Sterger, she is a model and television personality, and former online columnist for Sports Illustrated. In August 2008, the New York Jets hired her to be the "Gameday Host" for the team.[1]
Sterger was born November 29, 1983 in Miami, Florida. She rose to fame after she was shown on national television during a 2005 Florida State–Miami football game.[2] On seeing the shot, announcer Brent Musburger commented that "1,500 red-blooded Americans just decided to apply to Florida State."[2] She was one of the FSU Cowgirls, who are known for their combination of minimal tops, short shorts, and cowboy hats.She has since posed in both Maxim and Playboy magazines. Sterger is also the "Sports Babe" for Sprint Exclusive Entertainment. Sterger was featured on the E!: Entertainment Television show Byte Me: 20 Hottest Women of the Web that originally aired in March 2008, where she was #19 on their list. 
After contributing two articles to Sports Illustrated,[6][7] Sterger, for some time, wrote a Wednesday feature on SI.com's "Scorecard Daily."
On March 4, 2010 it was announced that she would be competing directly with ESPN's 6pm ET SportsCenter by co-hosting a new show on Versus called The Daily Line, which debuted on April 5. Jenn said, "I always felt sports TV was a bunch of guys in suits yelling at me. Other shows don't exactly know how to use social media and the Web," says Sterger. "Since I'm practically living on the Web, I've got a pulse on what going on out there.....And I'll be personally accessible to the audience, except for my personal phone number."[8] After seven months on the air, Versus cancelled The Daily Line as of November 4, 2010.[9]
In October 2010, reports surfaced on the website Deadspin that NFL quarterback Brett Favre was alleged to have sent Sterger several suggestive text messages, voicemails asking her to come to his hotel room, and explicit photos of himself while he was the quarterback for the New York Jets and she was a sideline reporter for the Jets (these events were said to have happened during the 2008 football season).[10][11]The league said its sole focus was on whether Favre violated workplace conduct policy, not to “make judgments about the appropriateness of personal relationships.”[12] Favre admitted to sending voicemails, but not images to Sterger. [13]He was later fined $50,000 for "failure to cooperate" with the investigation. The NFL stated that it "could not conclude" that Favre had violated the personal conduct policy, and that there was not sufficient evidence to establish if Favre had sent the photos.[14] Sports agent Phil Reese posted photos of Sterger (in reference to Brett Favre) to promote Player Public Relations in New York on his official website. Sterger's lawyer stated on March 19, 2011 that "Sterger never intended to profit in anyway from Brett Favre's communications. My client has remained silent about this for four years now and the truth is that it has impaired her employment opportunities. She does not want to be known as the Brett Favre 'text woman' and Mr Reese has no right to have any communications in his possession. He will have to return them or we will pursue our litigation against him which we are very confident will be successful." [13]
