Gretchen Wilson

If country singers are born rather than made, then Gretchen Wilson -- a real-life honky-tonk woman if ever there was one -- was surely destined to become one. The singer was born into relative poverty, spent her childhood fatherless and living in a small-town trailer park, and dropped out of school at the age of 14 to work in a bar where she eventually ended up singing Patsy Cline standards to the regulars. However, from such humble beginnings, she went on to become the archetypal "overnight success" when her first single, the rousing country anthem "Redneck Woman," shot straight to number one in the charts. Her debut album Here For The Party (2004) enjoyed similar phenomenal success and while Wilson eschewed the poppier side of country for a more rootsy, traditional sound, subsequent releases saw that she was unafraid to show her sensitive side, or to indulge her love of classic rock by covering songs by Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton and Heart.