Tara Slone

Born on September 7, 1973, in Montreal, Canadian rocker Tara Slone developed a sultry hard edge and a feisty voice that later defined her work with Joydrop, her independent releases, and her stint on the CBS reality competition Rock Star: INXS. She spent her formative years in Newfoundland before returning to Quebec at eighteen to enroll at Concordia University in Montreal, where she concentrated on music studies. Once her coursework ended, she relocated to Toronto intent on building careers in both music and acting. Her sole credited screen role was a three-episode arc on La Femme Nikita; further acting opportunities failed to materialize. In 1996 she assembled the rock band Joydrop alongside Thomas Payne, Tom McKay, and Tony Rabalao. The group’s debut album, Metasexual, arrived in 1999 and yielded three singles—“Beautiful,” issued across North America, “If I Forget,” issued solely in Canada, and “Spiders,” issued solely in the United States—while surpassing 100,000 units sold. Joydrop followed with Viberate in 2001, which featured the tracks “Sometimes Wanna Die” and “American Dreamgirl” and earned a Juno Award nomination. After enduring label difficulties, the band dissolved, prompting Slone to launch a solo career. She joined the 2005 season of Rock Star: INXS, a televised search for INXS’s next frontperson, and was the fifth contestant eliminated; although she landed in the bottom three on three of her four appearances, observers still regarded her as a standout talent. In 2007 she joined The Orange Record Label and issued her first solo album, Just Look Pretty and Sing.