Bret Michaels

Bret Michael Sychak, known professionally as Bret Michaels, is an American rock musician best known as the frontman of the band Poison. With Poison, he has sold over 65 million albums worldwide and 30 million records in the United States. The group charted ten singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, including six Top 10 entries and the number-one single "Every Rose Has Its Thorn."

Michaels was born on March 15, 1963, to Wally and Marjorie Sychak in Chicora, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, where he attended Mechanicsburg Area Senior High School. He has two sisters, Michelle and Nicole, and is of Carpatho-Rusyn, Irish, English, German, and Swiss descent. At six years old, Michaels was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes during a three-week hospital stay.

Michaels began playing guitar as a teenager and formed a band that eventually evolved into Paris in 1983, featuring drummer Rikki Rockett, bass player Bobby Dall, and guitarist Matt Smith. Renaming themselves Poison, the group relocated to Los Angeles in 1984. After C.C. DeVille replaced Smith, Poison signed with Enigma Records and released their debut album, Look What the Cat Dragged In. The album achieved platinum status in 1987 after Michaels persuaded the band to film a music video for "Talk Dirty to Me." That same year, Michaels suffered insulin shock and collapsed onstage at Madison Square Garden, prompting him to publicly clarify his diabetes diagnosis following media speculation.

Following a breakup with his girlfriend Tracy Lewis, Michaels wrote "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," which became a number-one hit in 1988. Poison experienced massive success with multi-platinum albums such as Open Up and Say... Ahh! and Flesh & Blood. However, internal tension between Michaels and DeVille escalated due to mutual drug use, leading to DeVille's departure after a physical fight in 1991. After recording with guitarists Richie Kotzen and Blues Saraceno, and surviving a severe car crash in his Ferrari during the mid-1990s, Michaels rejoined the original Poison lineup for a reunion tour in 1999.

Alongside his work with Poison, Michaels developed a solo career. He wrote, directed, starred in, and scored the soundtrack for the 1998 film A Letter from Death Row. In 2003, he released the solo album Songs of Life. He served as a judge on the singing competition Nashville Star in 2005, which influenced his country-rock album Freedom of Sound that same year.

Michaels gained further media prominence starring in the VH1 reality series Rock of Love with Bret Michaels, which inspired his 2008 solo album Rock My World. He won NBC's Celebrity Apprentice 3 and starred in the docuseries Bret Michaels: Life as I Know It, promoting his 2010 album Custom Built, which topped Billboard's Hard Rock chart. He also hosted Rock My RV with Bret Michaels on the Travel Channel in 2013.

Michaels continued releasing solo projects, including the 2013 album Jammin' With Friends and the 2015 compilation True Grit, which featured the single "Girls on Bars." In 2017, he released the single "Jorja Bleu," followed by the 2019 single "Unbroken," co-written with his daughter. Hit Parader ranked him at No. 40 on their list of greatest heavy metal singers of all time in 2006.