Melissa Gold aka Songbird had a troubled past. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother was in prison. In order to survive, Melissa developed a hard edgeed personality that she called “Mimi.”
Starting out originally as a criminal, Melissa Gold was initially known as the Screaming Mimi. A name she received from her time with wrestling group known as the Grapplers. The Grapplers were NOT just wrestlers. Secretly they were a covert group employed by Roxxon Oil company who provided them equipment to assist them on their missions.
Eventually the Grapplers were exposed, put on trial and went to prison. After their release , the members of the Grapplers underwent the Power Broker’s transformation process to enhance their abilities. Melissa instead of becoming augmented was instead implanted with vocal enhancements. After the break-up of the Grapplers, Melissa joined up with Baron Helmut Zemo Masters of Evil villain group.
Later Melissa formed a romantic and criminal partnership with the villain Angar the Screamer. Angar was mortally wounded during one of their heists and died in Melissa’s arms. Filled with grief, Melissa became true to her name (Screaming Mimi), screaming unendlessly until she burnt out her power. She was later found by Baron Zemo and with the help of the Fixer, received new powers via a voice-augmenting harness and high-tech implants in her neck. Her new sound powers worked similar to the powers of the bad guy Klaw, wherein she was able to create sonic cound constructs. Her new name became “Songbird.” It was the ruse of Baron Zemo to fool the world into believing their group (aka Thunderbolts) were the new superheroes after all the world lost their heroes in the battle with Onslaught.
Eventually Melissa and the other villains in the Thunderbolt rebelled as they wanted to be real heroes.