Ingrid Ellen Michaelson (born December 8, 1979) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Her first album, Slow the Rain, was released in 2005, and she has since released eight more albums: Girls and Boys, Be OK, Everybody, Human Again, Lights Out, It Doesn't Have to Make Sense, Songs for the Season, and her most recent, Stranger Songs. Her two highest-charting singles are "The Way I Am" (2007) and "Girls Chase Boys" (2014), at No. 37 and No. 52 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively.
Michaelson is half Swedish, and was born in 1979 in New York City, to artistic parents. Her father, Carl Michaelson, was a manager of copyrights for the publishing company Carl Fischer Music and a composer on the side ("The Praise of Christmas"). Her mother, Elizabeth Egbert, was a sculptor, of Dutch ancestry. Michaelson took up piano at age four, and trained until seven at Manhattan's Third Street Music School, continuing for many more years at the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island's Dorothy Delson Kuhn Music Institute. While there she met vocal coach Elizabeth McCullough, who worked with her through high school. She is a graduate of Staten Island Technical High School and Binghamton University, where she received a degree in theater. While at Binghamton University she was a member of the Binghamtonics, a co-ed a cappella group, as well as the Pappy Parker Players, an improv comedy group, and the theatre repertory company under Sue Peters. Her time at Binghamton is mentioned in the song "The Hat." She grew up doing a musical theater group called "Kids On Stage."