Lisa Loeb

Pixyish, bespectacled singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb made music history in 1994 as the first unsigned artist to score a No. 1 single with "Stay (I Miss You)," a winsome ballad featured on the soundtrack to the counterculture comedy "Reality Bites" (1994). Its success led to a brief tenure as part of the alternative-folk movement of the early '90s, enjoying major label fame and chart hits with 1995's Tails and Firecracker (1997) before achieving more modest returns with her efforts in the new millennium, including Cake and Pie (2003). Loeb shrewdly parlayed her effervescent personality into stints as a reality television star, most notably with "#1 Single" (E! Entertainment Television, 2006) and voiceover artist before finding a second wave of popularity as a children's music artist on Catch the Moon (2003) with former bandmate Elizabeth Mitchell and the charming Camp Lisa (2008). While Loeb's career as a musician for adults continued to hover in the lower end of the charts, she moved effortlessly into acting, books for children, her own eyewear line and philanthropic efforts in the 2000s while also continuing to release albums for adult and young listeners, which helped elevate her out of the '90s-pop doldrums that plagued such peers as Paula Cole, Joan Osbourne, Jewel and the Indigo Girls. Loeb's talent for memorable pop-folk and likability among a wide audience of media consumers helped to preserve her status as one of the more versatile female performers of the '90s and beyond.