Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American traditional pop singer, whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music and by 1955 had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Her 1952 song "You Belong to Me" topped the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, becoming the second single to top the UK Singles Chart and the first by a female artist to do so.