Tina Arena

Former child star Tina Arena came back in her mid-twenties to become the biggest selling female artist in Australian recording history, with success also around the world.

It all started with seven year old Filippina Arena falling in love with her sister's record of Daryl Braithwaite's 'You're My World'. She played it over and over, and chose that song to sing when as a flower girl at a wedding she ended up on stage - her first public performance. Pina (as she was known then) badgered her mother to let her be a contestant on Australian television's 'Young Talent Time'. When she won three of her four appearances the show's producers asked her to become a regular, and she became Tina Arena. What separated her from most of the other 'Young Talent Time' regulars was the fact that she was the one that wanted to be there. The others had stage parents scratching each other's eyes out in the dressing rooms. Tina was eight.

For the next seven years she was a TV star, known as the little girl with the big voice. At fifteen she reached the program's obligatory retirement age. It was very hard to be on TV every week for so long and then suddenly be nobody. Most of the 'Young Talent Time' retirees became typical child stars, on entertainment's scrap heap. Tina spent the next six years "forgotten", singing everywhere and anywhere she could, becoming a seasoned performer.

In 1989, aged 21, Tina Arena released her first album, 'Strong As Steel', a record which cast her as a dance diva, and saw her in raunchy videos showing off her cleavage as if to prove she was a woman now. It gave her a big hit with the single 'I Need Your Body' and the album sold in gold award quantities. But Tina was not comfortable. This was not her. This was not what she wanted to be for the rest of her life. Tina went into seclusion while she decided what to do next, moving to Los Angeles to be a nobody again. She took singing lessons and started writing songs. She returned in 1992 and spent most of that year working with Australian songwriters, accumulating more material. Ten months of 1993 were spent in the stage production of 'Joseph's Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat'. And then Tina Arena was ready to re-launch her recording career.

Signing a new recording contract with Sony the company tried to convince her to change her name and put the past completely behind her. Although that's what she wanted to do, Tina wanted to achieve that goal as herself. It would have to be done as Tina Arena. Flying to Los Angeles to record her next album Tina nearly broke down. This was an all-important moment in her career. From the moment the first single, 'Chains' was released, the clouds parted. 'Don't Ask' spawned five hit singles, and sold eight times platinum in Australia alone, the biggest selling album ever by a female recording artist. The album would also chart around the world and ended up selling two million copies internationally.

1996 and early 1997 saw Tina back in L.A., working on the follow-up album. David Tyson again produced four tracks, and Foreigner's Mick Jones took charge of the rest. This time around the album was recorded predominantly live in the studio in an attempt to bring the material closer to Tina's stage performance persona. On the way she married her manager Ralph Carr.

At home the new album wasn't quite the success of the first, but then it's always hard to repeat a phenomenon. 'In Deep' still gave Tina four hits and sold more than 200,000 copies, triple platinum. More important, the album consolidated Tina's place in the international market. The song 'Aller Plus Haut', added to the European version, was the biggest selling single in France for 1999.

In June 2000, shrugging off a messy personal and business separation from her husband, Tina was appearing in London's West End with the starring role of Esmeralda, in the new musical 'Notre Dame de Paris.' In November 2001 she released 'Just Me', recorded around the world with a variety of producers, but after the album's commercial failure Sony Records and Tina announced the end of their relationship in May 2004 - after ten years, four studio albums and worldwide sales of 3.5 million.

Tina's sixth album, 'Songs Of Love & Loss" was released on EMI. After being a strident critic of the "Idol" concept, and a credible one considering her own beginnings, Tina appeared as a guest judge during the London auditions of Australian Idol's sixth season. November 2008 saw the release of 'Songs Of Love & Loss 2' a second volume of cover songs.

Ed.Nimmervoll