Kari Kimmel - A Life in the Day (2006)

Born April 16th, 1978 in Boca Raton, part of Florida’s iconic Palm Beach County, American singer-songwriter and record producer Kari Kimmel has primarily made a name for herself as a prolific creator in the sync world, penning songs for TV shows, advertisements and video games. First rising to prominence at the beginning of the millennium with a series of writing credits for the likes of Gloria Gaynor and Backstreet Boys, she was soon called upon to record the theme tune for Disney’s 2004 movie Ella Enchanted, sowing the seeds for a long and fruitful relationship with film production company Miramax. Kimmel’s debut album, A Life in the Day, arrived in 2006, with a follow-up entitled Out of Focus landing four years on. The early 2010s saw her bag increasingly high-profile placements, with “Black” appearing in a Walking Dead trailer and “Perfect Day” featuring in the box office smash Southpaw. Around this time, Kimmel also contributed lyrics to Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas’ “My Song for You”, lent her voice to Pitch Perfect, and worked with Ke$ha on the unreleased number “Paper Aeroplane”. Returning with a flurry of new albums in the following years, she picked up an ASCAP Screen Music Award in 2017 for “Where You Belong”, the theme tune for teen drama The Fosters. Her 2019 cover of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” proved another hit, appearing in the Netflix martial arts drama Cobra Kai. In 2020, Kimmel returned with two new singles – "United” and “Wanna Be Happy” – as well as her second instalment of the Covers EP series.