Brooke Shields was a young star who had her first taste of massive fame — and controversy — with the film Pretty Baby, in which she’d played a child prostitute. Michael Jackson, youngest of the Jackson Five, was transitioning to solo stardom as an adult. They met in 1981, each with an uncertain path before them, but Brooke and Michael would find comfort and friendship in each other. 

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Robyn Crawford met Whitney Houston when they were both just teenagers. From the moment their eyes met, Robyn was drawn in by Whitney’s warmth and beauty — and when she heard her sing, Robyn knew she wanted to be in Whitney’s life for good. But the price she would pay for Whitney’s success was their own romance.

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Los Angeles, 1957. In the time of drive-in movies and sock hops, high school student Donna Ludwig liked to sneak out of the house to have fun with her friends. On one night out, she met a young guitarist named Richard Valenzuela and was immediately smitten. As Ritchie Valens, he would have a chart-topping hit with a song he wrote for her, before his life was tragically cut short.

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In rural Alabama circa World War II, a farm girl named Audrey Mae Sheppard was at the tail end of a series of bad decisions. An ill-fated marriage and a pregnancy made her a single mother at the age of 18, and she’d had to move back home. An aspiring singer herself, she one day discovered an unassuming, lanky singer-songwriter named Hank Williams, and they fell in love. Their tumultuous union was defined by her singular, driving ambition to make them both stars.

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In 1959, an American teenager named Priscilla Beaulieu, daughter of an Air Force officer, was living in West Germany. Lonely and bored, she was introduced to another American who understood the feeling. Elvis Presley, already a huge star, was serving a stint in the U.S. Army, and fell in love with the beautiful, though very young girl. The troubling relationship only became more complicated as the years passed.

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In 1962, the Caribbean island of Jamaica gained independence from Great Britain, and the fledgling nation yearned to establish an identity of its own. Two years later, Rita Anderson was a teenage single mother living in the impoverished Kingston suburb of Trenchtown, in search of something beyond her circumstances. She would find it as a singer in a rocksteady group. That would lead her to discover her twin flame: a shy young man who also saw music as his ticket out of Trenchtown. His name was Bob Marley. 

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By the time she was seventeen, London actress Jane Asher had already made a name for herself, onstage, in films, and in 1963 as a panelist on the BBC’s Juke Box Jury, a popular musical variety show. Due to her youth and popularity, she was offered an opportunity: interviewing The Beatles after their upcoming Royal Albert Hall concert. This simple assignment would be the start of a five-year relationship with Paul McCartney and a wild journey through the eye of Beatlemania and the 1960s cultural revolution, during which Jane would truly find herself.  

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In the early 1970s, actress Peggy Lipton was at a crossroads. She was the beautiful star of The Mod Squad, admired by girls and desired by men. And yet, she could not make a real relationship last, not until she met Quincy Jones, bandleader, record producer, and composer of Oscar-winning films. Sure, he was 13 years her elder, twice (and still) married with four kids. And never mind the roiling legacy of racism in America that would haunt their relationship. She knew he was the one.

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Mary Austin, shopgirl. Farrokh Bulsara, art student. They formed a bond that didn’t have a name and couldn’t be defined. Even as he metamorphosed into the superstar the world would know as Freddie Mercury, their connection would last until the end.

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In the mid-1960s, Los Angeles was a mecca of American music, and it was where Pamela Courson decided she wanted to be, escaping her suffocating conservative community in nearby Orange County. Pam was an intelligent but restless young woman, and she found a home among the outcasts of her generation who frequented the nightclubs and parties all over town. On one of these nights, she’d meet a sensitive and handsome poet who’d been thrust into the role of lead singer of a strange rock band called The Doors. Pam and Jim would quickly fall in love and over the next few years; their time together would be a rollercoaster. Ultimately, it would lead them to Paris.

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