Terri Clark

Terri Clark

Terri Clark, singer, songwriter (b Terri Lynn Sauson at Montréal 4 Aug 1968). Terri Clark's grandparents living in Montréal, Ray and Betty Gauthier, were stars of the Canadian country music circuit. Clark's appreciation for country was heightened during her adolescence in Medicine Hat, Alta, and, at age 18, she elected to follow her dream and move to Nashville. She honed her craft singing for tips in Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and paid her dues for 7 years doing odd jobs and singing wherever she could until she signed a deal with Mercury Records. Her 1995 self-titled debut album went triple-platinum in Canada and platinum in the US, and the album's first single, "Better Things to Do," became a smash hit. Both the song and the album won 1996 Canadian Country Music Association awards, and Clark was also named Canadian country's rising star with the Vista Award. In the US she was voted "Star of Tomorrow" on the fan-balloted Nashville Network/Music City News Awards, and Billboard magazine named her the top new female country artist of 1995. Clark's second album, Just the Same, was certified Canadian double-platinum, spurred by the number-one hit "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," which had been a pop hit for Linda Ronstadt in the 1970s. Clark was named Best New Solo Artist at the 1997 JUNO AWARDS . She won the Fan's Choice Award later that year at the Canadian Country Music Awards, where she also picked up the prize for Best Female Vocalist and had Just the Same chosen as the Album of the Year. In 1998 Clark hosted the Canadian Country Music Awards and released her third album, How I Feel, which was once again very well received by fans and critics on both sides of the border and spawned the US number-one country single, "You're Easy On The Eyes." Her Fearless album was released in 2000 and Pain To Kill, which had a huge single with "I Just Wanna Be Mad," followed in 2003.

Clark released a greatest hits collection in 2004 that included a new single titled "Girls Lie Too" that topped the American country chart. She became the first Canadian woman to be inducted into Nashville's Grand Ole Opry that year. Life Goes On (2005) was her seventh and final album for Mercury Records, and she signed with BNA Records in 2006. A compilation disc, 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection, was released in 2007. Clark was nominated for a Juno Award in 2010 for The Long Way Home, an album that she recorded following her return to Canada and a deep reevaluation of her musical career. Roots and Wings (2011), which explored themes arising out of changes in her personal life, including the end of a relationship and the death of her mother, was selected Country Album of the Year at the 2012 Junos.

Terri Clark has become one of the most decorated country stars in Canada and her albums have achieved combined sales of more than 4 million copies.