Who is Skylar Grey?

Official Single Cover

2010 was a big year for seemingly new singer-songwriter Skylar Grey, with songwriting credits on "Love The Way You Lie" (all 3 versions, serving as co-producer on the Piano Version), "Coming Home" with Dirty-Diddy Money (which she's also a featured artist on) and "Castle Walls", the chilling T.I. featuring Christina Aguilera single. Interesting fact though, the only people credited on the single "Love The Way You Lie" (check it) was Holly Hafferman, a.k.a. Holly Brook, a.k.a. the girl who sings the chorus on Fort Minor's well known hit "Where'd You Go" (in which she also plays the piano).

As a solo artist, Holly has released material as recent as June of 2010, however any official pages the artist had have either been cancelled, like her Twitter, which had previously updated posts on her MySpace, the last entry was June 20th 2010, and her Facebook Page, the last post being July 28th, however there are many posts by people asking about her name change.

Stage Names are nothing new in Hollywood or the music industry, whether it's dropping your last name (Cher, Beyonce, Rihanna) or an entirely new one (Lady Gaga, Fergie, P!nk), it's not out of the ordinary. It would appear that Holly is taking a Gaga-esque approach to renaming herself, removing all former websites, music and pictures of herself from the interwebs, however it wasn't that hard to put two and two together.

So what does this mean for the new artist? Well, she is clearly talented, she has a great voice, writes great songs, and great piano pieces. Great. Hopefully we'll start to see more of her new persona, not just on other people's records, but putting out some of her own, and then actually being out there, seeing her perform live, be more visible.

Fun fact; Holly Brook WAS signed to label Machine Shop Recordings, run by half of Linkin Park, including Mike Shinoda, a.k.a. Fort Minor. Alex Da Kid, up-and-coming producer-genius behind "Love The Way You Lie", "Airplanes" and "Coming Home" has signed her to his production company Wonderland Entertainment. Together, they make magic, not unlike the Dr. Luke + Ke$ha combo that proved very successful.

EDIT: Here's the list of songs she has written/composed that have been listed on the BMI song list.