Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.

Liner notes are descended from the notes of text that were printed on the inner sleeve used to protect a traditional 12-inch vinyl record, i.e., long playing or gramophone record album. The term descends from the name "record liner" or "album liner". On vinyl recordings, the most common placement of these notes would be the paper sleeve inside of an album jacket that served to protect the record from dust (dust sleeve or dust liner, etc.). As the rear covering of an album jacket was alied in early days in a fashion that resembled the tailored lining of garments (overlapping and protecting the edges of the front cover), it's also likely that "liner" could have been a printer's terminology for this back cover area as well.^{[citation needed]}

Such notes often contained a mix of factual and anecdotal material, and occasionally a discography for the artist or the issuing record label. They were also an occasion for thoughtful signed essays on the artist by another party, often a sympathetic sic journalist, a custom that has largely died out. However, the liner note essay has survived in retrospective compilations, particularly in box sets. It is also a tradition in Japan especially for foreign artist releases in Japan.

Aloe Blacc (born Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III; January 7, 1979) is an American soul singer, rapper and musician. He is married to Australian rapper Maya Jupiter.

Blacc was born in Orange County, California to Panamanian parents. He began his music career in 1995 as a rapper in the hip hop duo Emanon with producer Exile.

By the late 1990s, Blacc was part of the duo Emanon and joined the group Lootpack on tour in Europe. The duo released six albums. This led to Blacc working with the French Jazz group Jazz Liberatorz. He released an album at the end of the 1990s.

In 2003, Blacc signed with Stones Throw Records and began a solo career. On July 11, 2006, he released his first LP album, Shine Through, on CD, vinyl record and online (on the Stones Throw website).

He then toured across Europe and the U.S. with Emanon, while working on his second solo album.

In 2009, Blacc collaborated with the Japanese hip hop producer Cradle. They called themselves Bee.

In 2010, Blacc released his second album, Good Things, on Stones Throw records. The album was produced by Jeff Dynamite and Leon Michels for Truth & Soul Productions.

Bonnie Leigh McKee (born January 20, 1984) is an American singer-songwriter, formerly signed to Reprise Records. She released her debut album Trouble in 2004, which was a minor success. The single "Somebody" was included in the soundtrack to the 2004 comedy film Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!. As a songwriter McKee has enjoyed success writing international hit singles for Katy Perry ("California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" and "Part of Me"), Taio Cruz ("Dynamite") as well as Britney Spears ("Hold It Against Me").

McKee was born in Vacaville, California, and spent her formative years in the Seattle area. Upon moving to Seattle, she joined the Seattle Girls Choir. She toured Europe in 2000 as a member of its top Prime Voci choir, including a concert in Rome at the request of Pope John Paul II. She recorded two albums with the choir, including "Jackson Berkey Meets The Seattle Girls' Choir" and "Cantate 2000".

McKee's youth was somewhat unconventional. She attended the private high school, The Bush School, but amid failing most of her classes, and at the requests of parents concerned with the influence McKee would have on her classmates, she was kicked out before she could finish her freshman year. However, the week after her expulsion, The Bush School did allow her to participate in a program in which she spent a week in a recording studio with her classmates. This demo contained several songs that ended up on her album Trouble, including the title track and "When it All Comes Down", the latter being inspired by her rejection from the school.

Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She has released many chart-topping albums and singles over the course of her career, and has won 12 Grammys and numerous other awards.

In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including Gram Parsons, The Band, Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Mark Knopfler, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Rodney Crowell, and Neil Young.

Emmylou Harris is the daughter of a career military family, her father, Walter Harris, was a military officer and her mother, Eugenia was a wartime military wife. Her father, a member of the Marine Corps, was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian. In high school she also won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously, learning to play the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar. Leaving college to pursue her musical aspirations, she moved to New York, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. She married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, and Harris and her newborn daughter Hallie moved in with her parents in the Maryland suburbs on the edge of Washington, D.C.

Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Keys was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began playing the piano. She attended Professional Performing Arts School and graduated at 16 as valedictorian. Keys released her debut album with J Records, having had previous record deals first with Columbia and then Arista Records.

Keys' debut album, Songs in A Minor, was a commercial success, selling over 12 million copies worldwide. She became the best-selling new artist and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Fallin'". Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was released in 2003 and was also another success worldwide, selling eight million copies. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards in 2005. Later that year, she released her first live album, Unplugged, which debuted at number one in the United States. She became the first female to have an MTV Unplugged album to debut at number one and the highest since Nirvana in 1994.