CMAT

CMAT is the stage name of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, an Irish singer-songwriter whose country-pop theatrics blend humor, heartbreak, and heavy doses of internet culture. The moniker is simply an acronym of her full name.

She grew up around Dublin and Dunboyne in County Meath and says she knew as early as age 9 that pop stardom was the plan. "I was always just like, yeah, I'm going to be famous... I was always writing songs," she told Mojo magazine. Her mother worked as a "nurse-slash-carer," and most of her siblings followed similar practical paths. CMAT likes to joke she was the only one in the house who could sing, dance, or even wanted to.

From a young age CMAT was, by her own description, delusionally confident in a classic pop-star way. "I was 8 years old and I was like, 'I'm going to be a popstar, you have to bring me to Los Angeles so I can audition for Disney,'" she told Metal Magazine. But the same big personality made her an outsider in secondary school: "I spent six or seven years in my bedroom because I couldn't find anyone to get along with."