Joscelyn Eve Stoker, known professionally as Joss Stone, is an English singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to prominence in late 2003 with her multi-platinum debut album, The Soul Sessions, which made the 2004 Mercury Prize shortlist. Her second album, Mind Body & Soul (2004), topped the UK Albums Chart and spawned the top-ten single "You Had Me", Stone's most successful single on the UK Singles Chart to date. Both the album and single received one nomination at the 2005 Grammy Awards, while Stone herself was nominated for Best New Artist, and in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2004, was ranked fifth as a predicted breakthrough act of 2004. She became the youngest British female singer to top the UK Albums Chart. Stone's third album, Introducing Joss Stone, released in March 2007, achieved gold record status by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and yielded the second-ever highest debut for a British female solo artist on the Billboard 200, and became Stone's first top-five album in the US.
Joscelyn Eve Stoker was born on 11 April 1987 at Buckland Hospital in Dover, Kent, and spent her teenage years in Ashill, a small village near Cullompton in Devon. She is the third of four children born to Wendy (née Skillin) and Richard Stoker. Her father owns a fruit and nut import–export business Western Commodities; her mother worked as Stone's manager until October 2004. Stone attended the Uffculme Comprehensive School, in Uffculme, Devon, where she first performed with a cover version of Jackie Wilson's 1957 song "Reet Petite". Stone has dyslexia and left school at age sixteen with three GCSE qualifications.
Stone grew up listening to a wide variety of music including 1960s and 1970s American R&B and soul music performed by such artists as Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin. As a result, she developed a soulful style of singing like her idols. "My first CD that I owned was Aretha Franklin: Greatest Hits. And I saw the advert on TV and it was just like little clips of her songs. I had no idea who she was—I was only like 10 so. I said, 'Oh yeah, that looks really good', so I wrote it down and I said to my mum, 'Can I have that for Christmas?' So she told my friend Dennis, who always gets me good music anyway, and he got that for me. So that was one of my first albums that I loved." She would later tell MTV News: "I kind of clicked into soul music more than anything else because of the vocals. You've got to have good vocals to sing soul music and I always liked it ever since I was little."
| Date of Birth | 11th April 1987 |
|---|---|
| Age | 37 Years |
| Zodiac Sign | Aries |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Current City | Dover |
| Language | English |
| Reference | IMDB |
| Career Start | 2003 (21 years ago) |
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