Jonathan Davis

His parents married on February 27, 1970.

He is of English, German, Scottish, and Welsh descent.

Jonathan Howsmon Davis (born January 18, 1971), also known as JD, is an American singer, songwriter, and musician.

He is the lead vocalist and frontman of nu metal band Korn, which is considered a pioneering act of the nu metal genre.

Davis's distinctive personality and Korn's music influenced a generation of musicians and performers who have come after them.

Jonathan Howsmon Davis was born in Bakersfield, California, on January 18, 1971, the son of Holly Marie Chavez (née Smith; May 6, 1949 – February 25, 2018) and Ricky Duane "Rick" Davis (born December 14, 1948).

He has a sister, Alyssa Marie Davis (born February 8, 1974), as well as a half-brother, Mark Chavez (lead singer of Adema; born November 15, 1978), and a half-sister, Amanda Chavez (born July 31, 1981) by his mother.

His father was a keyboardist for Buck Owens and Frank Zappa, while his mother was a professional actress and dancer.

His parents divorced when he was three years old.

He lived with his mother at first, but, after experiencing bad situations at that home, he moved in with and was raised by his father and former stepmother in Bakersfield, but was made to feel like he "came in and ruined their perfect little family."

Davis suffered severe bouts of asthma as a child.

Asthma forced him to stay in the hospital every month from the ages of 3 to 10, and he survived a "critical asthma attack" when he was five years old; he said, "My heart stopped, and I didn't see no damn light or hear any music".

He attended Highland High School; however, he was persistently harassed for wearing eyeliner, baggy clothes, and listening to new wave music.

He was constantly called homophobic names, which later inspired the Korn song "Faget".

Davis's "HIV" tattoo on his upper left arm was also inspired by his experience of being bullied.

At the age of 16, Davis found employment as a coroner's assistant and after graduating high school he immediately enrolled in the San Francisco college's one-year program.

He enjoyed his time in San Francisco, where he spent his days poring over embalming textbooks and his nights living and working in funeral homes.

Nevertheless, he dropped out after two semesters to apprentice at a mortuary closer to home, in the Kern County Coroner's Department.

He was also a professional embalmer for a funeral home.

Davis commented in Kerrang!:

"'I had post-traumatic stress from seeing dead babies, and young kids that had died after finding a parent's stash of drugs – shit that I shouldn't have been seeing at 16 or 17 years old. I had to have a lot of therapy to make the nightmares go away, but I got through it and it made me appreciate life a lot more.'"

He did not get along with his stepmom and has accused her of harassing him and doing things like giving him tea mixed with Thai hot oil and jalapeño juice to drink when he was sick.

He also mentioned that she mixed tabasco with his tea.

Davis co-founded Korn in Bakersfield in 1993 with the dissolution of two bands, Sexart and L.A.P.D.

He had led Sexart during his years as an assistant coroner.

Davis rapidly gained notoriety for his intense and powerful live performances with Korn.

Anchored by his personal, passionate lyrics and unusual tenor vocals, Davis has launched a successful career which has spanned almost three decades, although his popularity declined in the middle of the 2000s.

Davis's vocals, which alternate from an angry tone to a high-pitched voice, switching from sounding atmospheric to aggressively screaming, have been the trademark of Korn throughout the band's career.

From 2000 to 2001, Davis and Richard Gibbs wrote and produced the score and soundtrack album of Queen of the Damned, his first work outside the band.

He began his side project called Jonathan Davis and the SFA in 2007 and continued to experiment with musical styles.

He released his first solo album in 2018.

He has collaborated with various artists over the course of his career, ranging from metal to alternative rock, rap, world music, and electronic music.

Davis is a multi-instrumentalist musician who plays guitar, drums, bagpipes, piano, upright bass, violin, and the clarinet.

He is also versatile in many genres, mixing tracks and performs DJ sets with his alter ego JDevil.

For decades, Davis has been passionate about visual arts, horror films, comics and video games.

Fourteen of his albums reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200, including MTV Unplugged and Greatest Hits, Vol. 1.

In the U.S, he was awarded fifteen platinum album certifications by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

In Australia, he received eight platinum album certifications by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), and in the UK he received six gold certifications.

He won two Grammy Awards out of eight nominations throughout his career.

As of 2018, Davis has sold over 40 million albums worldwide.