Marié Digby

Singer/songwriter Marié Digby first attracted widespread notice after uploading an acoustic rendition of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” to YouTube. The video accumulated thousands of streams, appeared in episodes of the MTV series The Hills, and earned her a guest spot on Last Call with Carson Daly. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she came from a mixed household that included an Irish-American father and a Japanese mother. Her fascination with music surfaced early; she started piano lessons while barely out of toddlerhood. During high school she added guitar to her skills and began playing original material in public. After graduation she enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of California, Berkeley, yet soon withdrew to focus entirely on a music career.

In 2004 the track “Miss Invisible” won top honors at the Pantene Pro-Voice Music Competition, which in turn led to prominent appearances on both MTV and VH1. Shortly afterward, at age twenty-one, she secured a recording contract with Hollywood Records. Reports circulating in 2007 claimed she had been discovered and signed solely because of the viral “Umbrella” clip; in later interviews she clarified that no deliberate attempt had been made to mislead the public. Around that period she issued a four-song EP that included her own take on “Umbrella.” Her debut full-length album, Unfold, arrived in 2008 and introduced her bright pop sound to listeners nationwide, whereas the follow-up Breathing Underwater, released the next year, shifted emphasis toward R&B composition and denser studio production.