Pop mythology likes the self-taught artist, the kid who found a guitar and a dream. Plenty of well-known voices took a more structured route, though. They sat in theory classes, practiced scales and played in student ensembles before a label ever heard their name.
The eight singers below all spent time in formal music training before their debut albums arrived. Some graduated, some left early, and each path looks a little different.
Norah Jones
Norah Jones studied jazz piano at the University of North Texas, a school with a long reputation for its jazz program. She was there in the late 1990s and was already singing and playing around town. Eventually she moved to New York to pursue a music career.
Her debut album, Come Away with Me, came out in 2002. It took her from small clubs to a major global audience, and it won multiple Grammy Awards. The jazz training is easy to hear in her piano touch and phrasing.
Lady Gaga
Before she was Lady Gaga, Stefani Germanotta studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She entered its Collaborative Arts Project 21, a program that mixed different artistic disciplines. She had also trained on piano from a young age.
She left Tisch to focus on performing in the downtown New York scene. Her debut album, The Fame, was released in 2008. Her classical piano background still shows up in her ballads and live piano sets.
Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys began classical piano lessons as a child. She attended the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan, where she studied music alongside her regular classes. That grounding gave her a real fluency with Chopin and Beethoven as well as R&B.
She also enrolled at Columbia University but left to focus on music. Her debut, Songs in A Minor, was released in 2001 and became a huge commercial and critical success. The title itself nods to her classical roots.
Esperanza Spalding
Esperanza Spalding is a bassist and vocalist who earned a place at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She did well enough there that she was teaching at Berklee while still very young. Few musicians can say that about their college years.
Her debut album, Junjo, appeared in 2006. She later became known for a sound that blends jazz, soul and Brazilian influences. Her early formal study gave her the technical range to move between those styles.
John Mayer
John Mayer enrolled at Berklee College of Music after teaching himself guitar as a teenager. He didn’t stay long, leaving after roughly two semesters. He then moved to Atlanta to play local clubs and write songs.
That move led to a deal and his major label debut, Room for Squares, in 2001. It’s a good example of someone using music school as a launch point rather than a finish line. His guitar playing still reflects a deep study of blues.
Lizzo
Lizzo studied classical flute performance at the University of Houston. She played in the school’s music program before she became known as a rapper and singer. Her early training in discipline and ensemble playing shaped her stage confidence.
Her debut album, Lizzobangers, was released in 2013 while she was building a name in Minneapolis. Mainstream fame came years later. The flute, however, never disappeared from her act, and she has famously played it on stage and on recordings.
Tori Amos
Tori Amos entered the Peabody Preparatory in Baltimore at a very young age, on a scholarship for piano. She has said in interviews that she later clashed with the school’s classical approach, and she left. Still, those years gave her formidable technique.
She released Y Kant Tori Read, a band project, in 1988. Her solo debut, Little Earthquakes, followed in 1992 and defined her piano driven style. The classical foundation is audible in the way she plays.
Diana Krall
Diana Krall, a Canadian pianist and singer, received a scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She arrived with years of piano experience and an interest in jazz. Her time there came before she built her career in Los Angeles and New York.
Her debut album, Stepping Out, was released in 1993. She went on to become one of the best known jazz vocalists of her generation. The Berklee years helped her develop both her playing and her repertoire.
