Lights

Lights is a Juno Award–winning singer, songwriter, and musician whose blend of electronic music, rock, and soaring pop lives up to the artist’s name. • The artist was born Valerie Anne Poxleitner in Timmins, Ontario. Her parents were international missionaries. • In 2001, she purchased an eight-track recorder with a $1,000 inheritance from her grandmother and used it to produce her first song, “Saturn’s Rings.” • At 18, Valerie moved to Toronto and began performing under her longtime nickname Lights. In her late teens, she wrote songs for Sony/ATV Publishing. • In 2008, Lights broke through with “Drive My Soul,” a Top 20 hit on Billboard’s Canadian Hot 100. In early 2009, Lights won Best New Artist at the Juno Awards. • “Drive My Soul” resurfaced on her 2009 debut album, The Listening. • Lights participated in the Canadian charitable effort Young Artists For Haiti following a massive earthquake that devastated Haiti in early 2010. The supergroup—which included Drake, Justin Bieber, and Nelly Furtado—released a chart-topping cover of K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag.” • Both of Lights’ next two albums—2011’s Siberia and 2014’s Little Machines—went Top 5 on the Canadian albums chart. • Lights authored and illustrated a comic book companion to her 2017 album Skin&Earth, a conceptual work centering on a female character surviving a post-apocalyptic universe. It became her third consecutive Top 5 Canadian album.