Maria Mena
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Maria Mena | ||
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 Promotional picture of Maria Mena (2006)
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Maria Viktoria Mena | |
| Born | February 19, 1986 (age 21) Oslo, Norway |
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| Genre(s) | Pop, Adult contemporary | |
| Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter | |
| Instrument(s) | Singing | |
| Years active | 2002–present | |
| Label(s) | Sony BMG | |
| Website | Official web site | |
Maria Viktoria Mena (born February 19, 1986) is a Norwegian pop artist.
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[edit] 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. This was a very hard period of Marias life. She suffered from depression and developed an eating disorder.
When Maria was 13 years old she moved to live with her father. She sang and wrote lyrics as a form of therapy for her feelings and frustrations. 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 got her put up with some of his contacts in the music industry to record Maria's songs. Then he presented his daughter's demo to several record companies. Sony Music signed Maria to their label.
In 2002, she released ber debut single "Free" in Norway. It did not chart there. "My Lullaby" was released as the second single and the song reached number five (#5) on the Norwegian Singles Chart. It 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. After its success, she released her debut album Another Phase in Norway, that reached the number six (#6) on the Norwegian Albums Chart.
On July 20 2004, mena made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, with her first international album White Turns Blue debuting at the top position on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart a week later and at #102 on the Billboard 200. She made a breakthrough into the worldwide singles charts that year with "You're the Only One," a successful song in many countries. The song was the only song that has ever appeared a Billboard chart, being the U.S. Top 40 Mainstream at number twenty-five (#25). "You're the Only One" peaked at the number thirty (#30) on the Dutch Top 40 and number nine-teen (#19) position on the Dutch Mega Single Top 100. Meanwhile, she has already released her second album in Norway. Mellow was less successful than her 2002 debut, but still managed to peak at number seven (#7) in Norway. The second single from both albums was "Just a Little Bit", which was a commercial flop, not managing to chart anywhere.
2005 saw the release of Apparently Unaffected in Norway and several other European countries, 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. In the Netherlands, the album was released in June 2006 and charted at #82. It slowly kept on climbing in the chart to reach its peak position in its 27th week at number eleven (#11), as "Just Hold Me" was getting airplay again. "Just Hold Me" was released in May 2006, but then did not chart in the official Dutch Top 40, but did chart in the country's physical singles chart (Mega Single Top 100) at #27. In October 2006, the song started getting heavy airplay again and this time it did managed to reach the official Dutch Top 40 and peaked at number twenty-six (#26). In the Mega Single Top 100, it peaked at number 7 (#7) in the beginning of November 2006. She performed at sold-out concerts in Utrecht and Amsterdam, after the success of "Just Hold Me". The album was at number forty-eight (#48) at the Dutch year-end chart, outselling other major artists P!nk's I'm Not Dead, Nelly Furtado's Loose and Beyoncé Knowles' B'Day. "Miss You Love" was released as the album's second single in the Netherlands and has, since its release there, reached the #61 position on the Mega Singles Top 100.
[edit] Discography
[edit] Albums
| Year | Cover | Title | Chart positions | Norway certification[1] |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOR [2] |
NL [3] |
US 200 [4] |
US Heat [4] |
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| 2002 |  |
Another Phase
|
6 | — | — | — | Gold (20,000) |
| 2004 |  |
Mellow
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7 | — | — | — | Gold (20,000) |
| 2004 |  |
White Turns Blue
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— | — | 102 | 1 | — |
| 2005 |  |
Apparently Unaffected
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6 | 11 | — | — | TBA |
[edit] Singles
| Year | Title | Chart positions | Album | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOR [2] |
NL 40 [5] |
NL 100 [3] |
US Hot [6] |
US Main [6] |
CHL [7] |
EU 200 [8] |
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| 2002 | "Free" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Another Phase |
| 2002 | "My Lullaby" 1 | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 2004 | "You're the Only One" | 8 | 30 | 19 | 86 | 25 | 8 | — | Mellow / White Turns Blue |
| 2004 | "Just a Little Bit" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 2005 | "Miss You Love" 2 | — | — | 61 | — | — | — | — | Apparently Unaffected |
| 2006 | "Just Hold Me" 3 | 2 | 26 | 7 | — | — | — | 147 | |
| 2006 | "Our Battles" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
Notes
- 1: "My Lullaby" is the only song that certified in Norway, becoming a gold single for selling over 5,000 copies in Norway.[1]
- 2: The single was officially released in the Netherlands in 2007.
- 3: The single was officially released in the Netherlands in 2006.
