Edie Brickell

Edie Arlisa Brickell, born March 10, 1966, in Oak Cliff, a neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, is an American singer-songwriter and Broadway book writer. The daughter of Larry Jean (Sellers) Linden and Paul Edward Brickell, she grew up alongside her older sister, Laura Strain. Brickell attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas before enrolling at Southern Methodist University, which she left after joining a band and committing to a career in songwriting.

Her professional music career began in 1985 when friends from her high school invited her to sing with their local folk rock group, the New Bohemians. She became the band's lead vocalist, and after the group secured a recording contract, the label renamed them Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. Their 1988 debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, reached No. 4 on the Billboard albums chart and was certified two-times platinum, producing the Top Ten single "What I Am," which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The follow-up record, Ghost of a Dog, arrived in 1990 and was a deliberate departure from the pop sensibility of the debut, intended to showcase the band's eclectic range. During these early years, Brickell developed a reputation for improvising lyrics in performance. The band continued to record and perform sporadically over the following decades, releasing Stranger Things in 2006, Rocket in 2018, and their fifth studio album, Hunter and the Dog Star, in 2021.

As a solo artist, Brickell released Picture Perfect Morning in 1994, Volcano in 2003, and a self-titled album in 2011. The music video for "Good Times," a single from Picture Perfect Morning, was included among the multimedia samples on Microsoft's Windows 95 Companion CD-ROM. In 1992, she collaborated with producer Bob Wiseman in New York and Toronto on a collection of songs featuring a wind ensemble, unusual keyboards, and Ron Sexsmith; the recordings were rejected by her record label and have not been released. In 2010, Brickell became a founding member of The Gaddabouts, a band that also included drummer Steve Gadd, guitarist Andy Fairweather Low, bassist Pino Palladino, and several other musicians. The group released The Gaddabouts in 2011 and Look Out Now! in 2012. The following year, two Gaddabouts tracks appeared on the soundtrack to the film The Way, Way Back.

A significant creative partnership developed between Brickell and comedian and musician Steve Martin. Their collaborative album Love Has Come for You was released on April 23, 2013, and the two promoted it with appearances on programs including The View and Late Show with David Letterman. Beginning in May 2013, Brickell toured with Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers across North America, and a live album from that collaboration was released in 2014. A second studio album with Martin, So Familiar, followed in 2015. That partnership also extended to the stage: in 2016, the musical Bright Star, for which Brickell contributed music, lyrics, and story alongside Martin, opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre. The production earned Brickell a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in 2016. In 2017, Brickell and Martin appeared together in Bernard MacMahon's documentary The American Epic Sessions, recording the traditional English folk song "The Coo Coo Bird" live on a restored electrical sound recording system from the 1920s; the track was included on the film's accompanying soundtrack.

In 2011, Brickell wrote the title song "The Meaning of Life" for Tamar Halpern's film Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life. In 2023, she became the founding vocalist of Heavy MakeUp, a band formed with brass player CJ Camerieri and trumpeter Trever Hagen that combines vocals, synthesizer, brass, and drum machines. The group released a self-titled debut album in 2023 and a second album, Here It Comes, in 2024.

Brickell met singer-songwriter Paul Simon on November 5, 1988, when she was performing "What I Am" on NBC's Saturday Night Live and noticed him standing near the cameraman. The two married on May 30, 1992, and have three children together: Adrian, Lulu, and Gabriel.