With a voice that galvanised the nation and a talent for imbuing ballads and bangers with emotion and power, Leona Lewis is one of the 21st century's leading soul-pop singers. Born in London in 1985, she attended the prestigious BRIT School during her teens, eventually leaving the performing-arts institution.

Faith Hill lays her journey to the upper echelons of country music for us at the beginning of her hit 2005 tune "Mississippi Girl": "It's a long way from Star, Mississippi to the big stage I'm singin' on tonight". She's done it with style-Hill's spectacular pipes, coupled with her girl-next-door vibe.

Ellie Goulding's breakthrough was nothing if not decisive. She rose to stardom in 2010 with her debut album, Lights, which earned the Critics' Choice prize at the Brit Awards and led the BBC's "Sound of…" poll. She's only the second artist to win both in the same year, sharing the honour with none other than Adele.

From his early days playing Chicago house in French discotheques to his long reign atop the pop charts, David Guetta has revolutionised dance music multiple times. Born in Paris in 1967, Guetta began DJing in the late '80s, when the shimmery sound known as the "French touch" was taking shape.

Sometime around the end of 2010, Sia Furler hit bottom. She was exhausted, numb, self-medicating. She'd had some success, but the trade-off-touring, promotion, life without privacy-felt too steep. She thought about suicide.

James Blunt can seem like the most soft-hearted kind of singer with his trembling falsetto and lyrics full of yearning. But as you might expect of a star who spent much of his pre-fame life serving in the army, he's not as easily bruised as he sometimes sounds.

A former busker with a self-described hippie streak, singer/songwriter/surfer Jason Mraz has a gift for observations about life's silver linings and effervescent melodies that are a staple of contemporary pop radio and bonfire strum-alongs. Born in Mechanicsville, Virginia, in 1977.

Combining traditional storytelling skills with a contemporary folk-rock sound, Scottish singer-songwriter Amy Macdonald has racked up a string of Top 5 albums in the UK. Raised in Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire, Macdonald was inspired by Oasis and Scotland's own Travis.

The electronic project VNV ("Victory Not Vengeance") Nation was conceived in London in 1990 by Ronan Harris, debuting in May of that year with the 12-inch "Body Pulse". Singles such as "Standing" and "Dark Angel" were club mainstays, boasting Harris' love for pulsating club rhythms.

Like many bands born of the late-'90s nu-metal boom, Evanescence built their empire atop a foundation of grinding riffage and anguished lyrics. But the Little Rock, Arkansas, group had something none of their peers had: the voice of Amy Lee.

The exuberant UK dance-pop group Steps scored 13 consecutive Top 5 hits during their 1998-2001 heyday. Steps were the creation of manager Tim Byrne and songwriters Steve Crosby and Barry Upton. They posted a newspaper ad and formed the five-piece group after auditioning thousands of hopefuls.

The duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have been crafting witty, hooky synth-pop since a chance meeting at a hi-fi shop in 1981. Tennant's reserved vocals and Lowe's crisp instrumentation added a sardonic existentialism to New Wave. Their first single, the 1984 chronicle of urban life "West End Girls".

Thanks to her preternatural gift for weaving ambient textures and multilingual vocals into towering songs, Enya has become one of the most successful Celtic musicians of all time, having sold an estimated 75 million records worldwide and scored four Grammys, five Billboard Music awards, and an Oscar.

During her championship season on the first American Idol in 2002, Kelly Clarkson wowed judges and viewers in ways that countless contestants have emulated since but few ever repeated.

When Mike Shinoda and the late Chester Bennington were writing lyrics for Linkin Park's 2000 breakthrough, Hybrid Theory, they made a pact: No cussing. It wasn't just about keeping their audience, a portion of which might've had trouble slipping Parental Advisory stickers past their parents.

Calling Josh Groban one of the biggest stars in the history of classical crossover certainly is high praise. Yet it doesn't even begin to sum up the talents of an artist who isn't just a vocalist but an actor, multi-instrumentalist and composer as well. When Groban first emerged in the late '90s, there was no musician quite like him.