Printable Biography of Mark McGrath

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He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, but grew up in California. He graduated from Corona del Mar High School and then majored in Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He worked as a truck driver before making his success in music.

McGrath met and began singing with a band called Shrinky Dinx in 1992. By 1994, the band had changed its name to Sugar Ray (after a threatened lawsuit by Shrinky Dinks manufacturer Milton Bradley), and landed a record contract with Atlantic Records. Their initial record was not successful, but the band achieved a number one hit with "Fly" in 1997, and the band went on to even greater success (see Sugar Ray for details).

Charismatic and personable, McGrath personal popularity soared as he appeared on national magazine covers (Rolling Stone and Spin, for example) and made numerous appearances on MTV, VH1, and various talk and awards shows. People magazine named him the "Sexiest Rocker" of 1998.

He contributed the track "Reaching Out" on Strait Up, a tribute album to late vocalist Lynn Strait.In the 2000s, he began making guest appearances on television shows like Las Vegas and North Shore, and he made a guest appearance with the rest of Sugar Ray in the 2002 movie Scooby-Doo.

He began his stint as co-host of the Extra television show on September 13, 2004.During 2004 he worked as a guest judge for American Idol auditions; these were aired in early 2005.