Feb. 13: Leslie Feist - Broken Social Scene and "1234" - is 35 today.

-----Did you know?

At the age of twelve Feist performed as one of 1000 dancers in the opening ceremonies of the Calgary Winter Olympics, which she cites as inspiration for the video "1234."

At the 2008 Juno Awards in Calgary, she was the top winner with five awards, including Songwriter of the Year, Artist of the Year, Pop Album of the Year, Album of the Year and Single of the Year.

-----

Leslie Feist was born in 1976 in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. She aspired to be a writer, and spent much of her youth singing in choirs. Because her father is American, Feist has dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship.

In 1991, at age 15, Feist got her start in music when she founded, and was the lead vocalist for a Calgary punk band called Placebo. She and her bandmates won a local Battle of the Bands competition and were awarded the opening slot at the festival Infest 1993. At this concert she met Brendan Canning, whose band hHead performed immediately before hers, and with whom she joined in Broken Social Scene ten years later.

She moved from Calgary to Toronto in 1996 and was asked by Noah Mintz of hHead to play bass in his solo project Noah's Arkweld. She played the bass guitar in the band for a year despite never having played bass before. In 1998, she became the rhythm guitarist for the band By Divine Right and toured with them from 1998 to 2000.

Beginning in 1999, Feist performed with an number of other musicians including Merrill Nisker and the electro-punk musician Peaches. Feist worked the back of the stage at Peaches' shows, using a sock puppet and calling herself "Bitch Lap Lap."

She also collaborated with Norwegian duo Kings of Convenience as co-writer and guest vocalist on their album Riot on an Empty Street. She also co-write and sang "The Simple Story" as a duet with Jane Birkin on her album Rendezvous.

Feist's solo debut album, Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down), was released in 1999. It is composed of 10 songs, including "Monarch" and "That's What I Say, It's Not What I Mean."

In the summer of 2001, Feist self-produced seven songs at home which she called The Red Demos, which have never been released commercially. She spent more than two years touring throughout Europe. She then joined a group of old friends in forming a new version Toronto indie rock group Broken Social Scene. While on tour in Europe she began recording new versions of her home recorded Red Demos, which would later become her major label debut Let It Die.

She won two Canadian Juno Awards for "Best New Artist" and "Best Alternative Rock Album" in 2004. Sales of Let It Die totaled 500,000 internationally, and she was awarded a platinum record in Canada, as well as a gold album in France.

Fellow Canadian Buck 65 appeared in the Feist-directed music video for "One Evening," which was also nominated for Video of the Year at the 2004 Juno Awards.

Feist's third solo album, The Reminder, was released on 23 April 2007 in Europe, and on 1 May 2007 in Canada, the USA, and the rest of the world. The album features "1234," a song co-written by New Buffalo's Sally Seltmann, that became a surprise hit after being featured in a commercial for the iPod nano, hitting #8 in the US, a rare feat for indie rock musicians and even more notable since it hit the Top Ten on the strength of downloads alone.

(Continued below video and Amazon portals ...)

(Press album cover for direct link to the entire Amazon Website):

-----Leslie has been lauded in the press and was featured on the cover of the New York Times arts section in June 2007. The Reminder had sold worldwide over 1,000,000 copies and is certified gold in the U.S. The album also won a 2008 Juno Award for "Album of the Year" in April 2008.

Feist performed an alternate version of "1234" on Sesame Street during its 39th season, teaching children to count. Also in 2007, Feist was placed #9 on Spinner.com's 2007 Women Who Rock Right Now. and named both Spin’s and Blender’s Breakout Artist of the Year.

In 2009, Feist was featured in the CTV television film "My Musical Brain" with neuroscientist and writer Daniel Levitin, based on Levitin's bestselling book This Is Your Brain On Music.

Feist collaborated with Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear on the song "Service Bell" for the AIDS charity the Red Hot Organization.

On September 22, 2010, Feist announced through her website the release of a documentary film about the creative process of making of The Reminder, called Look at What the Light Did Now. The film focuses on the recording of The Reminder as well as the development of the tour through puppetry and projection.

####