Anastacia

Anastacia was born in Chicago, Illinois into a showbiz family: her late father Robert Newkirk (of German descent) was a club-singer and her mother Diane Hurley (of Irish descent) an actress on Broadway. After her father (a sufferer of bipolar disorder) left the Newkirk family, they moved to New York City when she was a teenager. Then she enrolled at the Professional Children's School in Manhattan.

Anastacia soon became interested in dance despite being diagnosed with Crohn's disease when she was thirteen. She first gained prominence stealing the show from D. L. Hughley while he was hosting BET's Comic View, singing Oleta Adams' "Get Here" in 1992. During the early 1990s, she appeared regularly on Club MTV and in a couple of videos for the female hip hop group Salt-n-Pepa. In 1999, she attracted the interest of record labels after making the finals of MTV talent show The Cut.Anastacia signed a contract with Daylight Records, a custom label of Sony BMG's Epic Records in March 1999. The Cut was hosted by Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of the girl group TLC. A then-unknown Anastacia finished in second place, but impressed Lopes and the show's three judges so much that she scored herself a record deal.