Sandrine François - After The Rain

Sandrine François was born in Paris in December 1980. She is best known as the French representative at the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia in 2002. Her track "Il Faut Du Temps" ("It Tskes Time") was a typical French chanson, not disimilar to Céline Dion. With one of the best performances of the night, Sandrine did fantastically well to come 5th behind Estonia (Sahlene), the United Kingdom (Jessica Garlick), Malta (Ira Losco)and the winners Latvia (Marie N) - to make an all female top 5! Hurrah!

Sandrine also released her album "Et Si Le Monde" to acclaim, and has worked amongst others with producer Erick Benzi who has worked with the likes of Céline Dion and Indonesian star Anggun.

"After The Rain" is the English version of her Eurovision entry, and as far as English language versions go in Eurovision, it's definitely one of the better ones. Since then, I'm not sure what Sandrine has been upto, but hopefully we will hear more from her soon...

She Moves - Just For Tonight

She Moves were a 3 piece American girl group from the late 90s consisting of Carla Duren, Danielle Flora and Diana Bologna. All three girls met while they were dancers for the New York Knicks basketball team. They had a fairly short career which saw the release of their only album "Breaking All The Rules" in November 1997, which spawned 3 singles, the title track "Breaking All The Rules", "Just For Tonight", and "It's Your Love" - a cover of an old country track which has also been covered on Jo O'Meara's recently released debut album "Relentless". The girls also covered Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't It Be Good", and "Forever Young" (a Japanese and European bonus track) which was also released as a god-awful dance song by Interactive in both 1996 and 2003.

The whole album was written and produced by the German team The Berman Brothers, who also worked with The Real McCoy ("Run Away") and Amber ("This Is Our Night"), with the album having a diverse range of styles such as pop, ballads, drum and bass and unashamed Europop.

"Just For Tonight" is one of these Europop tracks, and was the third and final single to be lifted from the album. The track never fails to get me bopping along, especially with the dramatic synths in one part - and the girls have good voices for a dance track for a change! The 2 released singles also had Berman Brothers Dance Mixes, turning them into Europop tracks not unlike "Just For Tonight"!

After the album was released, the girls sadly disappeared but I'm sure they are out there somewhere, a short but sweet stay in showbiz!

Lena Philipsson - Jag Ångrar Ingenting

Hello everyone and welcome back to Girls On Pop! I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while but my old PC died on me and I had to start again and buy an brand new one, as it wasn't worth the hassle of trying to fix it yet again. So I have a brand spanking new one with loads of Hard Drive space and a 19 inch monitor - as they say bigger is better!

Anyway we're back with the blog with a brand new track taken from the new album by Swedish diva Lena Philipsson, or Lena Ph for short. I'm sure most of you will know who she is, but for those of you who don't, Lena is one of Sweden's biggest pop stars at the moment, enjoying a resurgence in popularity over the past year or so. Lena was born on 19th January 1966 and will be celebrating her 40th birthday in a few months!

In fact Lena has been going since taking part in a Swedish TV talent show in 1982, and has been releasing music since 1986, when she took part in Melodifestivlen with "Kärleken Är Evig" where she came 2nd. She tried again in 1987 with the now classic "Dansa I Neon" which could only come 5th, but went on to be a massive hit. After coming 2nd in 1988 with "Om Igen", she concentrated on releasing albums every few years including "Talking In Your Sleep" in 1988 and "Fantasy" in 1993, recording in both Swedish and English, with her later output in mostly English.

In 2004, after a break of a few years, Lena took part in Melodifestivalen again with "Det Gör Ont" ("It Hurts") which went on to win (beating Girls On Pop! fave Shirley Clamp) and Lena's popularity exploded, helped immensley by a fantastic new album "Det Gör Ont En Stund På Natten Men Inget På Dan" (what a mouthful!) and she had further hits with "Delirium", "Lena Anthem" and "På Gatan Där Jag Bor" ("On The Street Where I Live"). The album went on to be one of the biggest sellers in Sweden in 2004.

Cut to 2005, and Lena is back with a brand new album, "Jag Ångrar Ingenting" ("I Regret Nothing") and has just had a hit with "Unga Pojkar Och Äldre Män" ("Young Boys And Older Men") and is about to have another smash with "Han Jobbar I Affär" ("He Works In A Shop"(!) Thomas Orup, whom Lena has worked with on the last 2 albums is known for his lyrics, which may be lost on those of you who don't speak any Swedish, but take it from me, even although my Swedish is still at a basic level, they certainly are funny!

"Jag Ångrar Ingenting" is the title track from the album and is an uptempo Electro-pop stomper. Hopefully it will be released as a single at a later date, but if you like what you hear, please buy the album as it is completely ace or as Swedes say "Jättebra!"

Marta Sanchez - Soy Yo

Marta took a break for a few years, but bounced back with her fifth solo album in 2002. Entitled "Soy Yo", it was a mostly ballad heavy album with a few pop tracks inbetween. The biggest hit was the title track "Soy Yo", the second release from the album.

After this, Marta took some more time out and got married and had a little boy, and her most recent release was a best of album "Lo Mejor De Marta Sanchez", which included pretty much all of her singles as well as some new tracks, and new remixes of some old ones. Since then, she's gone a bit quiet, but there are rumours she will be back in 2006!

"Soy Yo" was written by the team behind Cher's "Believe" (originally in English and translated into Spanish by Marta.) You can certainly hear the similarities between the two, but Marta has the added advantage of having a few hotties in her video!

So there's my quick tour of some of my favourite Spanish music. Sorry I haven't been updating as reguarly as I should be, but now we go back to normal and I'll be posting some of my favourite tracks over the next few weeks! I will try to post on regular days, usually Wednesdays and Sundays (time permitting) so check back reguarly for some good stuff!

Marta Sanchez - Perfect Stranger

"Azabache" was Marta's third album and on this, she collabarated with Slash from Guns 'n' Roses on the track "Moja Mi Corazon" (in English as "One Step Closer). On this album, Marta's styles ranged from sweeping ballads on "Amor Perdido" to almost rock on "Moja Mi Corazon" to pop on "Ya Ves" The English version of the album was called "One Step Closer" and only around half of the album was translated into English. The other half of the album was sadly padded out with tracks from "My World". This was the first sign that Marta was moving away from recording in English.

Marta's next album came a year later with "Desconocida", which was probably her most polished album to date. Only the title track was recorded in English as "Perfect Stranger", (the track I've chosen to share with you) but she also had a hit with "Quiero Más De Ti". After this album, Marta decided to take a break and it would be 4 years before she released new material...

"Perfect Stranger" was released in the US, and a video was made of the track at the same time as the Spanish version - this is a regular occurrence when an artist releases music in different languages for different territories...

The third and final part of Marta's career will be in the next post...