Lisa Loeb

If she had never made another record, Lisa Loeb would still go down in the record books as the first unsigned artist to top the American charts, as her meteoric single "Stay" -- from the soundtrack to 1994's Reality Bites -- spent three weeks at number one soon after the film's release. Born in Dallas, Loeb studied piano as a child but later switched to guitar. At Brown University, she studied music theory and played as a duo with her roommate, Elizabeth Mitchell (who went on to garner indie accolades with the band Ida). After college, Loeb attended Boston's Berklee School of Music for one semester, but then formed a full band in 1990, which she christened (in tribute to J.D. Salinger) Nine Stories and rounded out with Tim Bright on guitar, Jonathan Feinberg on drums, and Joe Quigley on bass.