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| Mýa was born to an Italian-American mother, Theresa Harrison, and a Jamaican-father, Sherman Harrison. She grew up in the D.C. area and studied both singing and dancing as a child. Mýa sang alto and studied ballet, at one point taking lessons in New York City from Savion Glover. As a teenager, she appeared as a panelist on BET's Teen Summit talk show. She attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland. In 1997, Mýa signed a recording contract with Haqq Islam's University Records, after being brought to the label by her friends in the R&B group Dru Hill. The four members of the group, Tamir "Nokio" Ruffin, Mark "Sisqó" Andrews, Larry "Jazz" Anthony', and James "Woody" Green, wrote and produced half of Mýa's eponymous debut album. The first two singles, "It's All About Me" and "Movin' On," were co-written by Sisqó; the former song also featured Sisqó on guest vocals, while the latter featured rapper Silkk Tha Shocker. Both songs cracked the top 10 on both the R&B/Hip Hop Singles Charts and The Hot 100 Singles Chart. The third single, the love ballad "My First Night With You", was written by Diane Warren. The videos for all three songs were MTV staples through 1998. Besides her own work, Mýa was a featured artist (she sang the chorus), with Ol' Dirty Bastard, on Pras' smash summer 1998 hit, "Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)", from the Bulworth soundtrack. During the fall of the same year, she also scored a pop hit as a featured vocalist on BLACKstreet's "Take Me There" from the The Rugrats Movie soundtrack, which also featured guest raps from Ma$e and Blinky Blink. In 2000, Mýa returned to the music scene with her second album, Fear Of Flying. Its first single, "Best Of Me," was an urban R&B song that featured rapper Jadakiss and had an even more urban hip-hop remix, which featured Jay-Z. The song and its remix were huge on urban radio, but did not garner much cross-over pop success. Mýa's biggest pop hit came with the second Fear Of Flying single, "Case Of The Ex". The song's video was also huge on MTV's TRL. Following the success of "Case Of The Ex," Interscope re-released Fear Of Flying with a revised track order and two additional songs, including Mýa's third single, "Free." "Free" was even more pop-friendly and also became quite successful on MTV, TRL, and pop radio. In spring of 2001, Mýa joined forces with Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, and P!nk, on a remake of Labelle's "Lady Marmalade". The track was produced by hip-hop producers Missy Elliott and Rockwilder and was featured in Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge. The song's success was driven by its sexually suggestive video, which featured the four singers dressed in burlesque. Pink and Mýa later described that the immodest concept almost prevented the video from being filmed (Mýa appeared with a whipping switch in the video's opening scene); nonetheless, the video was a huge hit on MTV, VH1, and MTV2, and collected several MTV Video Music Awards in 2001. The song was also one of the year's biggest at pop, rhythmic, and even adult top 40--an unlikely supporter of any song at all urban-leaning--radio stations, receiving a dizzying 120+ plays per week at some American radio stations during the peak of its success. Though all four performers have had at least one subsequent mainstream hit, none of them has since achieved the same magnitude of chart success as they did with "Lady Marmalade". Around the same time, Mýa also began to dabble in acting. She had a supporting role in the 2002 musical film, Chicago, and most recently in 2005's Cursed. In 2003, Mýa and Common were featured as performers in a Coca-Cola advertising campaign called "Real Compared To What." In the summer of 2003, Mýa released the video for "My Love Is Like... Wo", the lead single from her third album, Moodring. Despite lackluster support from the hip-hop crowd, the song managed to become a top 20 hit in the U.S. due to its mainstream pop success. The follow-up single was "Fallen", a poppier song still that was not commercially successful but whose video remains in fairly heavy rotation to this day on VH1 Soul. The concept for the video for "My Love Is Like...Wo" was developed by Mýa herself; it is notable for a break in the middle which features Mýa doing a tap dance. Moodring debuted at #3 in the United States, selling 113,000 copies in its first week. It is currently a Gold record, with 505,000 sales to date. Moodring's modest success was eclipsed by releases from Monica, Beyoncé, and Ashanti, each of whom enjoyed Platinum-selling albums that same summer. Moodring failed to produce a single that made it to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. The second single from the album, "Fallen" (a song that sampled "Runnin'" by The Pharcyde) failed to become a big hit. In 2006, Mýa had an account on MySpace, but for no apparent reason it has been deleted; alltough she did confirm on her own website that she did maintain a Myspace.com account. Recently, Mýa is finishing her fourth album Control Freak, which is scheduled for a summer 2006 release and involves producers Dr Dre, Lil Jon, Scott Storch, Jonathan Rotem and Kwame. [1] [2] [3] The rumored lead single is an upbeat song entitled "Let It Go". According to Billboard.com, the new album is "halfway complete". A new song, produced by Tim & Bob, entitled "One Night" has officially been leaked on the Internet. [4] [5] Mya is also said to be working on having a clothing line which will start in 2008. |
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