6September
Readers are cautioned that this piece mentions R***n K*****g. If you wish to listen to his solo records, get a grown-up to help.
Jeanette Biedermann gets the spotlight this week. In the early 00s explosion of pretty young female singers, Jeanette was second favourite to Sarah Connor, but was clearly ahead of her various competitors. Think of her as the East 17 to Connor's Take That.
Jeanette won the 1999 Schlagerwettbewerb contest, sponsored by national tabloid Bild. The closest British equivalent would be The Sun finding a pop singer with large vocal talents. Though she recorded an album Enjoy!
, it was a bit rubbish, and she put her pop career on the back burner, securing a place on the soap opera Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten
.
A further album, Delicious
, came out in late 2001, with all three singles making the top 12. The carousel kept spinning for all it was worth, and third album Rock My Life
came out in autumn 2002. The lead single and title track from the album became Jeanette's biggest hit, peaking at number 3 and spending two months in the top ten. The album also contained a cover version of We've got tonight
with Ronan Keating; the Irish dullard recycled his vocal track for the British market, substituting the aging Lulu for the bouncy and young Jeanette.
Back to Jeanette, and two more singles - It's over now
and Right now
were taken from her third album, and all four released made the top 10 in Germany. Album four, Break On Through
, was released in late 2003, her fourth album in three years. There was no let-up in the quality, or the success - Rockin' on heaven's floor
was the traditional fast opener, while No eternity
is a top-drawer power ballad.
It's fair to say that Break On Through
is a microcosm of Jeanette's career as a whole, almost alternating between europop fast songs and power ballads. We suggest that she's better on the slow numbers, as the only clunkers are fast ones.
Two more releases followed: a 2003 live album with the imaginative title Jeanette In Concert
, and a 2004 festive album with the even more imaginative title Merry Christmas
. Jeanette's release in 2005 was Bad girls club
, a lumpen mess of a single, which made number 20 on fan-base support, and then scarpered from the chart. Her album Naked Truth
crept out in April 2006, and was a bit of a flop; a live release from the tour was an even floppier flop.
We're advised that Jeanette is currently working on a new album, her sixth proper release of the century. We're rather hoping for her to find a sound she can perform well, and she can call her own.
