Cheryl (singer)

Cheryl Ann Tweedy (born 30 June 1983) is an English singer and television personality. She rose to fame as a member of Girls Aloud, a pop girl group created through ITV's reality competition show Popstars: The Rivals in 2002. Named the United Kingdom's best-selling girl group of the 21st century in 2012, Girls Aloud amassed a string of 20 consecutive UK top ten singles (including four number ones), two UK number one albums, five consecutive platinum-selling studio albums, and five Brit Award nominations, winning Best Single for "The Promise" in 2009. The group went on hiatus in 2013, before reuniting for a tour in 2024.

While still in Girls Aloud, Cheryl began a solo career in April 2009, and between then and 2014, she released four studio albums – 3 Words (2009), Messy Little Raindrops (2010), A Million Lights (2012) and Only Human (2014). Collectively, the albums spawned ten singles, five of which – "Fight for This Love", "Promise This", "Call My Name", "Crazy Stupid Love" and "I Don't Care" – reached the top position on the UK Singles Chart, making Cheryl the first British female solo artist to have five number-one singles in the UK.

Cheryl became a judge on the British edition of the television talent show The X Factor in 2008. She mentored two of the eventual winners of the competition (Alexandra Burke in series five and Joe McElderry in series six), before resigning in 2011 after series seven and joining the panel of the American edition, which she left during the auditions stage. She returned to judge series eleven and twelve of the British series in 2014 and 2015. Cheryl next served as a judge on the television dance competition The Greatest Dancer from 2019 to 2020, and made her stage debut in the West End play 2:22 A Ghost Story in 2023.

Cheryl has become a recognised and photographed style icon, being referred to as a "fashionista" by the press. She has been photographed for the covers of British Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar, and fronted cosmetic company L'Oréal from 2009 to 2018.

Cheryl Ann Tweedy was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 30 June 1983, and grew up on council estates in the suburbs of Walker and Heaton. She is the fourth of five children of Joan Callaghan, and the first of her two children with Garry Tweedy following the collapse of her marriage to the father of her three other children. Cheryl's parents were together for more than a decade but never married; they separated when she was 11 years old. Cheryl's paternal line originates from Tyneside. Among her paternal ancestry were a number of coal miners and several mariners. Her maternal grandmother, Olga Ridley, was one of twin girls born to widower Joseph Ridley and his housekeeper Edith Annie Burton. Ridley already had a number of children from his marriage. Ridley had fought in World War I in the Durham Light Infantry as a Pioneer in France and before the war had been a grocery warehouseman.

At the age of seven, Cheryl appeared in a television advertisement for British Gas. Interested in dancing from an early age, she began sequence dancing at the age of four, and participated in a short summer holiday course at the Royal Ballet School's Summer School at the age of nine. She occasionally appeared doing dance recitals on different television shows in the UK, such as Gimme 5, in 1993.

Cheryl auditioned for the reality television show Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, which aimed to create a boy band and a girl group to compete for the Christmas number one spot on the UK Singles Chart. She sang "Have You Ever" in her audition, and was one of twenty contestants (ten girls and ten boys) chosen as finalists by judges Pete Waterman, Louis Walsh and Geri Halliwell. The finalists performed live on Saturday evenings, with one gender performing each week, and each week the contestant polling the fewest phone votes was eliminated, until the final line-ups of the five-piece groups emerged. Cheryl was in danger of elimination twice, surviving over Emma Beard and Aimee Kearsley in consecutive performing weeks. On 30 November 2002, she was the first contestant to qualify for the girl group, and was joined by Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh to form Girls Aloud, following the final public vote. The group's debut single "Sound of the Underground" peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the 2002 Christmas number one over boy band One True Voice's "Sacred Trust / After You're Gone". Girls Aloud hold the record for the shortest time between being formed as a band and achieving a number one single.

Girls Aloud released their debut album Sound of the Underground in May 2003, which entered the charts at number two and was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) later the same year. Their singles "I'll Stand by You", "Walk This Way", and "The Promise" charted at number one. Two of their albums reached the top of the UK Albums Chart: their greatest hits album The Sound of Girls Aloud and 2008's Out of Control, both of which entered the chart at number one, with over one million copies of the former being sold. They also achieved seven certified albums and were nominated for five Brit Awards, winning the 2009 Best Single for "The Promise". The group's musical style was pop, but throughout their career they experimented with electropop and dance-pop. Girls Aloud's collaborations with Brian Higgins and his songwriting and production team Xenomania earned the group critical acclaim, due to an innovative approach to mainstream pop music.