Today is Their Birthday-Musicians: October 30: Singer Vanessa White of The Saturdays is 24-years-old today.

Vanessa Karen White was born in Yeovil, Somerset. She was drawn to performing when just a toddler. She attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School on Saturdays before being offered a full time place when she was five. To help her fulfill her dream, her family moved to Stratford, London.

In high school, she appeared in several theatre productions, including the West End production of The Lion King as Young Nala and also played one of the King's daughters in The King And I from 2000-2002.

With a recording contract in hand as a soloist, Vanessa auditioned for, and was accepted as, a member of a newly-formed girl group The Saturdays 2007.

The Saturdays are a British/Irish girl group formed in London, UK in 2006. Besides Vanessa, the other four members are Frankie Sandford, Mollie King, Una Healy and Rochelle Wiseman.

The group made their recording debut in 2008 for the record label Fascination Records, a sub-division of Polydor Records. They have released three albums, and scored eight UK Top Ten singles, with only nine singles released. As of August 2010, the band have sold nearly 2 million records.

Vanessa and the other four members hit it off immediately, and due to her extensive vocal range, they dubbed her as "our Christina Aguilera." She has also been compared to American singers Alicia Keys, Beyoncé and Mariah Carey.

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White, who is the youngest member of the group, is the only one to have solo parts in every song on their 2008 debut album Chasing Lights. (When performed live the vocals of the song "Chasing Lights" are shared among all five members.) The B-side to their single "Work," "Unofficial," is a revamped version of a song White wrote during her teenage years and was originally titled "Artificial Love."

In June 2009, while The Saturdays toured the UK, Vanessa tripped over a cable before a performance in Dundee before they were about to go on stage for the second show of the tour and tore a ligament in her ankle and missed a large proportion of the show that night. Once paramedics had strapped up her foot, she was permitted to join the band on stage in a wheelchair.

White spent the next few shows appearing on stage sitting on a bar stool and gradually began to stand for more and more songs as the tour progressed, before being able to perform her choreography again.

Along with the other members of the group, White has co-written a track on their second album, Wordshaker, titled "Deeper."

In July 2009, Vanessa provided additional vocals on Master Shortie's debut album A.D.H.D. on the "Swagger Chick" track. In January 2010, White participated in the British ITV1 celebrity reality television programme Popstar to Operastar.