viernes, 3 de agosto de 2007
Maria Mena Biography
| |
Maria Mena was born into an artistic family. Her mother wrote plays and her father Charles was a drummer. Both Maria and her younger brother Tony are named after characters from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.
Her father played in several bands in Oslo, which influenced Maria towards music. When Maria was nine years old her parents divorced, which was very rough on Maria. She suffered from depression and developed an eating disorder.
When Maria was 13 years old she moved to live with her musician father. She sang and wrote lyrics as a therapy for her feelings and frustration. Not all the stories in her diary became songs, but "My Lullaby" was one of them, expressing her pain from her parents' divorce. After pleading with her father to make a demo, he contacted some industry experts to record Maria's songs in the studio. Then he presented his daughter's demo to the music industry. Sony Music signed Maria to their label.
In March 2002, Maria's single "My Lullaby" reached #5 on the Norwegian Charts. The song received heavy rotation on NRK P1, P3, P4, Radio 1 and Radio Oslo. The young singer quickly gained fans and soon earned her first platinum record.
On July 20 2004 she made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, with her album White Turns Blue reaching #1 on the Heatseekers Chart a week later. She made a breakthrough into the worldwide singles charts that year with "You're the only one," a successful song in many countries.
2005 saw the release of Apparently Unaffected, fronted by singles "Miss You Love," and "Just Hold Me." A significant success in Norway, the album has earned her three Spellemann nominations, best female artist, best hit and best music video.
--Wikipedia