Pop singer/songwriter Jennifer Paige was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. At age eight, she began performing in local coffeehouses as part of a duo with her older brother, Chance Scoggins. Two years later, she began studying piano. A short time after moving to Los Angeles, Paige teamed with producer Andy Goldmark and began work on her self-titled debut LP in 1996. Originally released on the German indie label Edel, Jennifer Paige was issued in the U.S. on Hollywood Records in 1998. The album spawned the international chart-topping single "Crush," which would become her best-known.
After drawing on Greek tragedies and MGM musicals for her earlier albums, it would be hard for Julia Holter to find loftier sources of inspiration. On Have You in My Wilderness, she recasts her ambition to a more intimate scale: where her previous album Loud City Song had the heft of a novel, these songs play like a collection of short stories. Indeed, Holter remains as literary as ever; her influences include Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories – with Holter taking a sultry, Sally Bowles-meets-Nico turn on the torchy "How Long" – as well as the novella Chance Acquaintances by Colette, whose Gigi begat Loud City Song.