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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.
Tina
has lived in France since 2008. In December 2011 she was awarded one of
France’s highest honours, the Knighthood of the Order of National Merit, by
the incumbent French President for
her contribution to the French culture. In her time living in the country
she has recorded a number of French-language albums.
Ed.Nimmervoll
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