Rachel Ashley Platten[1] (born May 20, 1981) is an American singer and songwriter. She released three independent albums between 2003 and 2014, before signing with Columbia Records in early 2015.
She rose to fame in 2015 with the release of the single “Fight Song“, which peaked at number six on the US Billboard Hot 100, topped the charts in the United Kingdom and peaked within the top ten of multiple charts worldwide. Platten won an Emmy Award for the live performance of the song on Good Morning America. Her major-label debut album, Wildfire, released in 2016, was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and featured the hits “Stand by You” and “Better Place.”
Platten was born on May 20, 1981, in New York City to a mother of Irish ancestry, but grew up in Newton Centre, Massachusetts and attended the Mason-Rice Elementary School.[2] She was raised Jewish.[3][4]Platten studied classical piano from the age of 5 and then took up guitar in high school. She attended Buckingham Browne and Nichols high school, where she sang in the school’s singing group. At Trinity College, she was a member of the Trinity College Trinitones, the college’s first all-female a cappella group.
As a part of a study abroad program, she went to Trinidad to do an internship at a diplomat’s office and at a record label. While she was there, she sang backup for a friend’s band in front of over 80,000 people at the International Soca Monarch finals in 2002. According to Platten, from that moment on she knew she had to pursue music full-time.[5]
Platten graduated from Trinity College with a degree in international relations in 2003. She then moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village performing with Prince and Sly and the Family Stone cover band called Dayz of Wild. She performed her solo music around the Village and eventually began touring the country.
She has worked with numerous charities, Musicians on Call (where she sings bedside to hospital patients) for 11 years and she is an ambassador for Music Unites. She also works with the Ryan Seacrest Foundation and was an ambassador for Live Below the Line, a call to end world poverty.
Listen to “Stand By You”
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