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Maria Mena

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Maria Mena

Maria Mena is a singer/songwriter from Oslo Norway known for musical honesty and maturity uncommon for an artist her age.

1 About
- 1.1 Awards & Certifications
- 1.2 Chart Toppers
2 News
- 2.1 Tours & Concerts
- 2.2 Announcements
3 Discography
- 3.1 Albums
- 3.2 Singles
4 Trivia
5 External Links

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About

Maria Viktoria Mena was born on February 19, 1986 in Oslo, Norway. She was born into family with a strong leaning towards the arts. Her father is a Nicaraguan-American drummer/musician, and her mother was a Norwegian playwright. Both Maria and her younger brother Tony are named after characters from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.

"All my life that was all I ever wanted to do... Be normal, average if you may... Not stand out. Being 11 years old and 6 ft. tall doesn't help! Believe me." The depth of her songs has always been very real and mature for her age. At eleven, she wrote and entered her first song in a contest for a chance to meet the boyband, Hanson. "At the time I was head over heels in love with Taylor and I would have done anything to get to meet them. Well I didn't win, but it got me into songwriting."

Maria's successful career began early. She wrote her first hit song, "My Lullaby" from her first album, Another Phase, when she was thirteen. She reveals that, when she was nine, she suffered from depression and developed an eating disorder when her parents divorced. "My Lullaby" was a reflection of that ordeal. "My Lullaby became a big thing. They had never heard a teenager sing so openly about divorce before... I realized that when I wrote songs and created music, I liked myself. It's my therapy."

Her career met bumps along the way. After hearing her hum a tune while on a bus, "my dad thought it would be cool for us if we got to record it. So, he called a couple of guys he knew who had a studio and made an appointment for us to go and sing a cappella for them... well long story short... we sucked big time! I guess my dad promised himself never to do that again, 'cause it took about a year of trying to convince him... (a lot of tears) before he picked up the phone and called Arvid (my good friend and producer) there I recorded 'Lullaby,' and the rest is history..." After that she says, "getting my record deal was pretty easy. I got in touch with the right people and boom! There it was."

Maria Mena Promotional Photo

Her second album, "Mellow" was released and topped the Norway charts when she was eighteen. Later that year "Mellow" was re-released in North America as the album known as White Turns Blue, with a few tracks coming from her first album Another Phase. The first single, "You're The Only One" broke through US charts, drove a small US tour, and culminated with a performance on The Late Show with David Letterman late in July of 2004. However, wanting to keep her identity and trying to veer away from being too commercial, Maria decided it was time to take a break. In an interview for ELLE Magazine, she was quoted: "Hi I'm Maria Mena, I'm a singer/songwriter from Oslo Norway, I'm so excited about being here. It's really awesome. In interviews they would ask me, 'What's your favourite lipstick? Do you have a boyfriend? What do you do when you have time off? Do you wear Ugg boots?' I wanted to say, 'Hey, you! Listen! I am writing my own songs! You don't have to like them, but my blood, sweat, and tears are in them."

Back from a good break and with a new outlook, Maria Mena returned with her latest album, "Apparently Unaffected" in November 2005. Originally released only in Norway, the reviews and ratings have been so spectacular that it entered the rest of Europe. She says, "I shall use time to be the artist I want to be. I'll treat each album as if it were the last."

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