Singer Jennifer Nettles was born on September 12, 1974 in Douglas, Georgia. She has been performing musically since her public school days, singing at assemblies and in church.

While she was attending Agnes Scott College Nettles teamed up with fellow student Cory Jones – who had been studying classical guitar – to form the group Soul Miner’s Daughter. They performed both as a duo and with a separate band, releasing two albums together: The Sacred and Profane (1996) and Halleluja (1998). Both featured songs written jointly by the two artists.

In 1999 however Nettles struck out on her own, forming the Jennifer Nettles Band. Under this name she produced three studio albums and two live ones, performing at Lilith Fair in 1999 and receiving the Independent Musician of the Year Award from the Musician’s Atlas. Most of her work during this time was of a darker tone than with Soul Miner’s Daughter and rather introspective.

Nettles moved into brighter tunes in 2003, however, when she teamed up with two more musicians,Kristen Hall and Kristian Bush, to form the band Sugarland. The band’s purpose was far less introspective and more just to generate energy and fun while on stage. The band was signed on by Mercury Nashville Records in 2004 and released their first single,“Baby Girl”. It would later form part of their debut album (they’d released albums before, but all were self-published and only sold at concerts) Twice the Speed of Life, which would sell multi-platinum and generate three more singles. Afterwards the band toured in 2005, promoting themselves, and then again between 2006 and 2007. They found themselves nominated for Best New Artist Grammy in 2006.

In that same year Nettles performed a duet with rock band Bon Jov iin their joint song “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?”. The song managed to hit 23rd place on the Billboard Hot 100 and first place on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. The video for the song also managed to win a CMT Music Award.

In 2006 the trio of Sugarland became a duo when Hall departed, allegedly heading home to write songs on her own. Nettles and Bush worked as a duo to release their next album, Enjoy the Ride, which debuted in November 2006 to good reviews and matching sales. Sugarland continues to release albums to this day – their latest, in 2008, is Love on the Inside, which was also their first number one album – and performs regularly, both at their own concerts and at award ceremonies.

Sugarland has, however, run into a bit of legal trouble, as former member Hall has sued the group for $1.5 million. She claims that she’d agreed to share both profits and losses with her former band mates but that she has been largely cut out of the loop monetarily since leaving. A decision on the lawsuit is pending.

Nettles currently lives in the North Georgia Mountains. She is recently divorced, having left husband Todd Van Sickle in March 2007.