Mindy McCready, 1975–2013

Mindy McCready lived the wild and tragic life that most country stars only sing about. In 2005 alone, she overdosed twice on drugs and alcohol, was arrested for drunk driving, and was viciously assaulted by her country singer boyfriend. She also attempted suicide and got pregnant. “I’ve been beaten, sued, robbed, arrested, jailed, and evicted. But I’m still here,” she wrote fans last year. “I’m down, but I’ll never be out.” This week, the 37-year-old took her own life on her front porch in Heber Springs, Ark.—the same spot where her boyfriend had killed himself a month earlier.

Malinda Gayle McCready had a rapid rise to fame, said the Fort Myers, Fla., News-Press. At age 18, she arrived in Nashville with tapes of her karaoke vocals, having been told by her mother that she’d have to come home to Fort Myers if she didn’t land a recording contract within a year. “McCready got her break.” She signed with BNA Records, and her debut album, 1996’s Ten Thousand Angels, sold 2 million copies. Her cocky, man-baiting single, “Guys Do It All the Time,” topped the chart that same year. “I can’t believe how fast this happened,” said McCready, then 20. “I feel like the Cinderella story of the century.”

But soon “she was spiraling downward,” said CNN.com. Her love life had been messy since her teenage affair with major league pitcher Roger Clemens, and as the hits dried up and romances fizzled, she abused substances. In 2004 McCready was placed on probation after pleading guilty to fraudulently obtaining the painkiller OxyContin, and in the years since then her life turned even darker. In January, she found David Wilson’s body at their Arkansas home, soon after he had apparently shot himself in the head. In interviews following the shooting, McCready called Wilson—with whom she had a 9-month-old son—her “soul mate,” and said she had “never gone through anything this painful,” said TheTennessean.com. “I just keep telling myself that the more suffering that I go through, the greater character I’ll have,” she said.

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