Hope Partlow

At age 14, most girls are thinking about school dances and maybe, just maybe, their driver's license. Unless you're Hope Partlow, who at age 14 was picking vegetables on her parents' 100-acre farm by day, and singing country hits onstage with her dad by night. With the help of her musically-inclined family, she wrote and recorded a handful of original songs for her demo. And thanks to her Nashville-based songwriting aunt, Partlow had a foot in the door with a couple of her relatives' connections. It wasn't long before the young musician was asked to audition in the office of an executive at Virgin Records. Signed on the spot, she began writing with such well-respected songwriters as Angie Aparo (Faith Hill's "Cry"), Kevin Kadish (Stacie Orrico's "More to Life") and Dan Wilson of Semisonic. She shared her diary (literally) and pieces of her life with these writers, and together they came up with the songs that make up her debut, Who We Are, recorded in New York City, and was released in 2005.