Michelle Robin Lewis (born 1971 or 1972) is an American singer-songwriter who has released two solo albums. She has since worked as a songwriter for artists including Cher, Shawn Colvin, Hilary Duff, Kay Hanley and Kelly Osbourne.[1]
Lewis began performing with emerging downtown NY bands such as Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors while she attended Columbia University[6] as a religion and psychology major. After graduation, Lewis was hired by jazz label GRP Records as a production coordinator; she then signed a publishing deal with BMG Music in 1994 for songs she was writing for her band, The Jazzhole, which was signed to Bluemoon/Atlantic Records in 1994.
Lewis signed with Giant Records as a solo artist and released her debut album, Little Leviathan, in 1998. The single "Nowhere and Everywhere" charted in Billboard and was featured on the soundtrack of the film Practical Magic.[8] In the summer of 1998, she appeared on some dates of the Lilith Fair tour.
Lewis' second album, Letters Out Loud, was released in 2001 on Kismet Records. Relocating to Los Angeles, she joined with other women singer-songwriters, forming the ad hoc group The Dilettantes and a postmodern Andrews Sisters-style trio, The Goods. Lewis also continued to write songs for other artists, including a co-writing credit on "A Different Kind of Love Song," a No. 1 dance-pop single for Cher in 2002. From 2006 to 2009, Lewis and Jill Sobule formalized their collaboration as "The Provocateurs", contributing commentary, opinions, and original topical and political songs to their Provocateurs blog on Yahoo! Music and to the Huffington Post blog.
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In 2008, Lewis and her husband, Dan Petty, co-wrote songs with Lisa Loeb for the children's album Camp Lisa, and performed on the album. More recently, Lewis is known for creating music for the Disney Jr show Doc McStuffins, which aired for five seasons, and for which she won a Peabody Award in 2015. She also received her first Emmy nomination in 2015, at the 42nd Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Outstanding Original Song, as the composer of "Holiday Ride" for the Nickelodeon show Bubble Guppies.[11]
While she continues to perform with The Goods, write songs for pop radio and compose for kids’ television, Lewis' experience as a working songwriter led her and some long-time collaborators (Kay Hanley, Shelly Peiken and Pam Sheyne) to found Songwriters of North America (SONA) – a Los Angeles-based organization of professional songwriters and composers who advocate for upholding the value of their work in the digital future.[12]
^"United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KQ5F-63L : 7 January 2021), Annette Benbasset in household of Joseph Benbasset, The Bronx, New York City, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 3-256, sheet 62A, line 5, family 116, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 2467.
^Gavin, John A. "Workshops on words give clue to future", The Record, March 3, 2000. Accessed January 6, 2023, via Newspapers.com. "Lewis, the recording artist, had similar advice as she told students how she sat in the same classrooms in the mid-1980s. Now 28, Lewis lives in Manhattan, has written songs for prime-time television, and just cut her first CD. Yet she said she didn't want to miss the opportunity to come back to River Vale and talk to students who might have the same dream she had."
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