Brad Paisley
Contemporary country singer/songwriter Brad Paisley was born October 28, 1972, in Glen Dale, West Virginia. He started playing guitar at the age of eight and Brad delivered his first public performance at church two years later.

With his guitar teacher Clarence "Hank" Goddard the teenaged Paisley formed his first band, the C-Notes, and at age 12 began writing his own material. After performing in front of the local Rotary Club, he was invited to appear on Wheeling station WWVA's famed Saturday night broadcast Jamboree USA . Paisley 's debut was so well received that he was invited to join the program full-time, and in the years to follow he opened for the likes of the Judds, Roy Clark, and Little Jimmy Dickens.

Signing to Arista, he issued his debut solo album, Who Needs Pictures, in 1999. The record produced two chart-topping singles in "He Didn't Have to Be," an ode to loving stepfathers, and "We Danced" and also earned generally positive reviews for its diversity of country styles. In the meantime, Paisley recorded a duet with Chely Wright, "Hard to Be a Husband, Hard to Be a Wife," for the Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry compilation; the two later collaborated on several songs for Wright's Never Love You Enough album.

The sequel to Paisley's debut, Part II, was released in 2001 and promptly returned him to the Top Five with "Two People Fell in Love." "I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin' Song)" gave Paisley his third chart-topper, and "Wrapped Around" fell one spot short of becoming his fourth. "I Wish You'd Stay" became the fourth Top Ten hit from the record in early 2003. At the beginning of August 2005, Paisley put together a short "director's commentary" preview of his next album for his fan base to download. The full album, Time Well Wasted, appeared two weeks later and narrowly missed the top of the album charts, though it did hit number one on the country charts.

During his career Paisley’s four Arista Nashville albums have all been certified Platinum or Double Platinum, with total sales well in excess of six million copies, while his two most recent discs—Mud on the Tires and Time Well Wasted—debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. Time Well Wasted also ended its first week at No. 2 on the pop sales chart with 192,000 copies sold, while Mud on the Tires likewise launched in the pop Top 10.

From the computer-animated cartoons he creates and presents during his shows to the amusing way he leads his crack band through their breakneck instrumentals, Paisley broadens the idea of how country music can be presented and how music can hold an audience’s attention in a multi-media age.

“When I sit down with a guitar to write a song, or when going into a recording studio, the focus is really on one thing: ‘How will this song work on stage night after night?’ I think about that every time I write something and every time I record a song,” Paisley says.