Country star, Mindy McCready is dead, after committing suicide earlier tonight (Sunday, 2/17/13). Stacy McCloud, an entertainment reporter with Nashville TV-outlet WZTV, Fox-17 confirmed in a tweet the apparent suicide of the troubled country singer. She was 37 years old. Besides her parents and siblings, the singer is survived by her two children, six year old Zander and ten month year old Zayne.
Roughly a month earlier, her boyfriend and "soul mate," music-producer David Wilson also died of apparently - even though the Sheriff investigation in his death is still on-going - committing suicide.
Born (November 30, 1975 as Malinda Gayle McCready) and raised in southern Florida, Mindy moved to Nashville when she was 18 years old and was able to secure a recording contract within a year. McCready broke into the country music scene in April of 1996 with her first top ten hit, the title-track of her double-platinum debut "Ten Thousand Angels." Off the same album came her only #1 hit "Guys Do It All The Time" in July of the same year. A follow-up album "If I Don't Stay The Night" was still certified gold, and Mindy was able to celebrate another top ten hit - "A Girl's Gotta Do (What A Girl's Gotta Do)." After the singles of her third album for BNA - "I'm Not So Tough" - failed to crack the upper ranks of the charts, she left the label.
Three years later, in 2002, she published a self-titled album for Capitol records, which yielded her last two singles - "Scream" and "Maybe, Maybe Not" that hit the country music charts,
And even though the hits stalled for McCready, she kept herself continuously in the headlines, although in the tabloids. In 2004 she pleaded guilty to various drug charges, a year later she ended up in the hospital after being assaulted by her ex-boyfriend, who was charged was attempted homicide. Probation violations put her into jail, several overdoses, traffic violations, suicide attempts and a rumored decade long affair with baseball great Roger Clemens kept the name afloat.
Three years ago, she appeared in a reality TV series "Celebrity Rehab 3," other TV talk shows and released her last album "I'm Still Here" on the Canadian (but US distributed) imprint Linus Entertainment. The album got mixed reviews, most reviewers heralding the McCready co-written title track as a statement of the singer's soberness.
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| vividceleb.com |
Earlier this year Wilson died off a gunshot wound in their boathouse in Arkansas. Even though apparently self-inflicted, the Cleburne County Sheriff's office kept the investigation open. Drowned in tears, McCready - while not a suspect - called in an interview with NBC's Today show (1/29/13), the investigation a witch hunt and denied her involvement in the death of her "soul mate" and "life partner."
Sources: youtube, NBC Today Show, twitter, vividceleb.com, WZTV, various biographies
