This is Mary Lambert. You know her as the female voice on Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' hit "Same Love."
1. Before she became well-known for her chorus on their song, she was an aspiring singer-songwriter who worked as a brunch waitress and bartender.
2. Her friend, Hollis Wong-Wear, who has sung on the duo's "White Walls," knew Mary was a struggling songwriter. She recommended Mary to the guys, who were trying to write a chorus to "Same Love."
3. She wrote the chorus for "Same Love" from her vantage point of being both a Christian and a lesbian.
4. She was nominated for two Grammy awards for "Song of the Year" and "Album of the Year" with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
5. "Same Love" also got Mary a recording contract with Capital Records.
6. Her first single off her EP, "She Keeps Me Warm," is an extension of "Same Love," that Lambert calls "the other side of the story." The music video features a relationship between two women.
7. "The video is about visibility," Lambert says. "I could be wrong, but I've never seen a relationship like mine accurately portrayed in a music video."
8. She was raised in a strict Pentecostal household.
9. She began playing piano and writing songs at age six and taught herself to play guitar at age ten.
10. She abused drugs and alcohol before being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
11. She survived a gang rape at age 17.
12. She was molested repeatedly by her father as a child.
13. She discovered spoken-word poetry at 19. After watching poets Anis Mojgani and Shira Erlichman on YouTube, she became obsessed.
Anis Mojgani (left) and Shira Erlichman (right)
“There I am chain-smoking and watching YouTube videos in my bedroom at 6 a.m. when a spoken-word video comes on the screen," she wrote. "I knew I had to do it, that it was another part of me that needed to be explored."