Duncan James

One quarter of the British boy band Blue, Duncan James was born April 7, 1978, in Salisbury, England, and raised by his grandparents in Dorset. After high school, James moved to London to pursue a career in music, where he met up with friends and future bandmates Anthony Costa, Simon Webbe, and Lee Ryan. In May 2001 Blue released their first single, and over the next four years the group sold millions of albums both in Great Britain and across Europe. In 2005, though no official announcement was ever made, Blue split up, and each of the members began working on solo projects (though a single by James — actually a duet with Keedie — I Believe My Heart, from Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White, had already come out in England in 2004). In the spring of 2006 James' true first single, Sooner or Later, was released, followed soon after by the full-length Future Past. Though the album didn't chart as high in Britain as Blue's had, it did do well in places like Italy and Belgium, where he (and his former band) had a strong, mostly female, fan base.