Mindy McCready

Malinda Gayle McCready (born on November 30, 1975), better known as Mindy McCready, was an American country singer whose ill-fated career was marked by tragedy. A Fort Myers native, she started singing at age 3 in her local church and relocated to Nashville as soon as she turned 18 to try her luck in the music industry. There, she was quickly signed by BNA Records, who released her debut album, Ten Thousand Angels, in 1996. The LP debuted at Number 5 on the US Country charts and obtained double platinum certification by the RIAA, largely thanks to her Number 1 hit “Guys Do It All the Time.” She followed up with If I Don’t Stay the Night (1997), which peaked at Number 12 on the Top Country Albums chart and went gold after selling 825,000 copies. Things started going seriously awry after the commercial failure of the albums I’m Not So Tough (1999) and Mindy McCready (2002) as the singer pleaded guilty to drug charges and was put on probation. In 2005, she was hospitalized after a gruesome domestic violence episode with her ex-boyfriend and received a one-year jail sentence for violating her probation. Following a suicide attempt in 2008, McCready appeared in VH1’s Celebrity Rehab 3 and released I’m Still Here in 2010. She gave birth to her second son in 2012 but things took a dark turn when her husband and producer David Wilson committed suicide in 2013, which led McCready to take her own life just a few weeks later.