The daughter of The Boston Globe fashion critic Julie Hatfield, Juliana grew up in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. She acquired a love of rock music during the 1970s, having been introduced by a babysitter to the music of the seminal Los Angeles punk rock band X, which proved a life-changing experience. She was also attracted to the music of more mainstream artists like Olivia Newton-John and The Police, perhaps explaining the dialectic in her later music between sweet, melodic "pop" songs and more hard rock oriented material. Visualizing herself as a singer since her high school years, Hatfield sang in school choirs and briefly played in a cover band called The Squids, which played Queen and Rush songs.

Following her graduation from Duxbury High School, where she was voted "Most Individualistic", Hatfield attended Boston University for a semester. She then transferred as a piano student to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, in the hope of finding a band with which to sing. There she soon met Freda Boner (now Freda Love) and John Strohm, forming the Blake Babies with them in 1986, at the age of 19. The band, with which she sang and played bass guitar (as well as some guitar and piano), was signed to North Carolina's Mammoth Records and received a fair amount of airplay on college radio through the early 1990s. The group toured the United States several times, performed in Europe, and made several music videos. Hatfield eventually earned a degree in songwriting from Berklee.

Although Hatfield shared vocal duties with Strohm in the group, she quickly stood out due to her unique vocal quality; her somewhat thin, girlish voice gave the group a youthful, innocent sound that was nevertheless belied by often-caustic lyrics and a vocal delivery punctuated frequently by harsh, distorted screams (in live performances more so than on recordings). Although the group's early work was essentially punk-oriented, they quickly settled into a sunny, melodic, and slightly jangly pop style reminiscent in style of early R.E.M. and Neil Young. Hatfield and Strohm shared songwriting credits and often sang together in harmony or octaves, creating a memorable "boy-girl" sound rarely encountered in rock (except in the work of X and a few later indie bands as Hazel, Velocity Girl, Low, Mates of State, and Rainer Maria).

The group formally disbanded in 1991 but, largely due to the persistent efforts of Freda, reunited briefly in late 1999, performing a few shows in 1999 and 2000 and embarking on one last U.S. tour in 2001.

Hatfield began her solo career following the Blake Babies' breakup in 1991, releasing her first solo album (Hey Babe) in 1992 and achieving minor stardom with the release of 1993's Become What You Are (recorded under the group name The Juliana Hatfield Three). Several songs from the album received regular airplay on major North American rock stations, and one of her songs ("Spin the Bottle") was used in the soundtrack of the Hollywood film Reality Bites (1994). In retrospect, it can be seen that Hatfield's popularity was part of a greater trend, in the mid-1990s, of increased interest in female rock artists (with Liz Phair, P J Harvey, Belly, Letters to Cleo, Velocity Girl, The Breeders, Hole, Veruca Salt, Poe, Throwing Muses, Magnapop, Bettie Serveert, and others also rising to prominence during this period). Although she has always maintained that her gender is of only incidental importance to her music, Hatfield was pleased to have been invited, in 1997, to tour with the first Lilith Fair, a prominent all-female rock festival founded by singer Sarah McLachlan. Hatfield was profiled in a number of girls' magazines at this time, becoming embraced by many pre-teen and teenage girls as a role model due to the positive way she addressed serious issues faced by young women in her songs and interviews. She gained notoriety upon claiming to still being a virgin in her mid-to-late twenties.

In 1996 she traveled to Woodstock, New York where she recorded tracks for God's Foot, which was to be her fourth solo album (third if not counting Become What You Are, which was recorded with the Juliana Hatfield Three), intended for 1997 release. Containing some of Hatfield's finest work to date, the album was unfortunately put on indefinite hold by her record company due to a disagreement with Hatfield. Only substandard bootleg versions of these songs (which do not meet Hatfield's approval) have surfaced and she has rarely featured them in her subsequent live performances.

In 2005, Hatfield released the album Made in China on her own new record label, Ye Olde Records. In contrast to 2004's In Exile Deo, the album is louder, rawer, and provocative. John Doe of the band X, described the disc as "A frighteningly dark & beautiful record filled w/ stark, angular, truly brutal songs & guitars. This is surely a 'Woman Under the Influence', though I'm not sure of what".

In December 2005 Hatfield toured the United States with the band X, whom she idolized during her teenage years.

--Wikipedia