June 26: Harriet Wheeler, lead singer of the alternative rock band, The Sundays, is 40-years-old today.

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Harriet Wheeler was born on 26 June 1963, and grew up in Sonning Common, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. She was enrolled as an English literature student at Bristol University when she met David Gavurin, who shared a common passion for music.

After singing in a band called 'Cruel Shoes' an early incarnation of the band Jim Jiminee, Wheeler and Gavurin sent demos to a number of clubs in London. Wheeler and Gavurin became the core of the soon-to-be popular alternative band, The Sundays, with Paul Brindley on bass and Patrick Hannan on drums. The name of the group won by default since it was the only one they could all agree on.

The Sundays performed their first show in August 1988. Their debut album, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, was released in 1990. Rolling Stone reviewer Ira Robbins called it "an alluring slice of lighter-than-air guitar pop, a collection of uncommonly good songs graced by Harriet Wheeler's wondrous singing." The album sold over half a million copies worldwide.

The band released their second album, Blind, in 1992, and it also sold nearly half a million copies. In February 1995, Wheeler and Gavurin had their first child, a daughter named Billie. They eventually released their third and final album, Static & Silence in 1997. Kevin Raub of Ray Gun, called Static and Silence "the band's most solid effort to date."

Although the band retained much of the same sound that they'd developed on previous albums, they added horns to a number of tracks for Static & Silence. Although the album as a whole was not as successful as Reading, Writing, & Arithmetic, one of the singles from Static & Silence, "Summertime," became their most successful hit to date on the UK charts. However, on the U.S. charts, the single, though it made it to the 10th spot on the U.S. Alternative Rock charts, was only The Sundays' third most successful single, lagging significantly behind "Here's Where the Story Ends and "Love."

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