Norwegian singer/songwriter Maria Mena is another of Hanson's supporting acts, who wants nothing more than to "backpack across Australia". Maria is heading Down Under in September to promote her new album "White Turns Blue". You may have heard Maria Mena's new single 'You're The Only One' on the radio in Australia. The album "White Turns Blue" is out Monday, August 9th in Australia. Check out Maria's bio below and then visit her Official site to see the video clip for 'You're the Only One' as well as sample some of the new songs on her upcoming album "White Turns Blue"...
Biography
White Turns Blue
Maria Mena is a singer/songwriter/performer with a rare and precious
gift. Her songs come directly from her heart and her experience, are
written with candor, clarity and purpose, and are performed with a
disarming guileless charm. That she is 18 years old makes her talent
all the more remarkable and all the more vital. She gives voice to the
roiling emotions of adolescence and to those deeper emotions we never
outgrow.
"I've always tried to be really honest and really direct and not hide
anything," she says. "I just write songs that I would want to listen
to. One song can create one emotion or several."
White Turns Blue serves as the perfect introduction to the music of
Maria Mena. Taking its title from a poem written by a close friend of
Maria's, White Turns Blue brings together 12 of her songs, from buoyant
pop tunes to heartfelt ballads, each illuminating a different aspect of
her psyche. "I've always looked at music as an emotional thing," she
says, "something that has to do with feelings, whether it's happy or
sad. I had never been able to explain to my friends or my family how I
felt until I started writing songs. You know how there's that one song
that you put on when you feel really bad, when you're having a bad day
and it makes everything better?" White Turns Blue is a showcase full of
just that kind of song.
In a song like "You're The Only One," Maria captures the intoxicating
exhilarating rush of young love in finely-wrought details, awkward
moments boldly stated. The dazzling hook-dappled tune finds her
prankishly teasing her boyfriend while admitting the fears and
self-doubt underlying her affection. It's a post-modern update of
classic teen pop songs and feels completely real and gloriously
unaffected. Every girl has felt exactly this way about a guy and every
guy wants a girl to feel exactly this way about him.
"After I wrote 'You're The Only One,'" Maria says, "I realized I wanted
it to be the first single." Toward that end, she traveled to Iceland to
lens a video for the song, which promises to be her breakout track.
"Blame It On Me," on the other hand, puts a new melodic spin on the
age-old theme of teenage defiance. "As a kid," Maria confesses, "I was
very rebellious. This song is about my dad, written from his
perspective."
Maria's father, a professional drummer, was instrumental in helping
Maria get her start in the music business. When she was 11, Maria and
her dad were riding a city bus and she started humming a tune. Her
father asked her if it was a track she'd learned from MTV and was both
surprised and delighted when she told him it was a song she'd made up on
her own.
On a lark, they decided to cut a demo of that song, "My Lullaby," which
Maria had written at age 11 to express her feelings of pain and loss
surrounding her parent's divorce. "My Lullaby," with its haunted
melody, plaintive lyrics, and unadorned vocals, touched a nerve and
became a national hit in Norway. (Maria, since her mom and dad split
up, lives with her father, a New Yorker. She also has family in
Florida.) "'My Lullaby' became a big thing," she says. "They had never
heard a teenager sing so openly about divorce before."
In 2002, she recorded her first Norwegian album, Another Phase.
"Everything was about when I went to junior high school," she says.
"The whole album is about not fitting in. I don't fit in anywhere and
I've come to embrace that. I like it because I'm odd, I'm weird, I'm
hard-to-get. I think all artists are misfits. It takes something extra
to be able to explore yourself like that, to give so much of yourself."
Another Phase became a platinum album in Norway, leading to live shows
in front of thousands of fans, national television appearances, and
nominations for three Spellemannpriser Awards (the Norwegian equivalent
of the Grammys).
"People really got to know me and really liked me for me and that was
really fun," Maria says of her first blush of success. "I had a lot of
fans, young girls who basically needed someone to relate to. I gave a
lot of myself and I had a lot of fun."
But, as she was maturing as a artist, Maria was also growing up as an
individual. "Suddenly," she says, "my real life was catching up with
me. I had so many things I had to address, like friends. Basically, I
had a normal life, I went to school, but people didn't know how to act
around me because they'd seen me on TV and it's weird when your friend
becomes a TV and music star. I do not blame them at all because I'd
probably react the same way. When you're that young, you're still
developing, you're still becoming a person. I took a lot of time to
just get to know myself. I had always been insecure, about everything
teenage girls are insecure about, but I had to go through that in the
public eye."
For Maria Mena, it always comes back to the music. "Have you ever
hummed a melody that you just made up?," she asks. "That's how I do it,
though it's more intense, on a more conscious level. I collect words
and I collect sentences until I get a song, then I put them down
together. I've learned to use that gift." She works with producer
Arvid Solvang to create her arrangements. "I sing for him, hum the
melody, and he puts chords to it," she says. "I have this sound in my
head. Within pop, you have little boundaries, but I can do whatever I
want: I can do jazz, soul, and R&B, but all within pop. Music keeps on
breaking boundaries, it keeps on pushing those limits and that is what
makes everything so universal and so amazing and I don't think we should
explain it. Just leave it at that and basically see where it takes us
next."
Biography and photo taken from Maria Mena's Official Site.
* A BIG thank you to everyone at Electric Artists, especially Erica for helping to make this competition possible! *
Enter our competition to win a Maria Mena poster!
** Please note that this competition is only open to Australian and NZ residents. All entries must be recieved by midnight (AEST), Sunday August 15th. The winner will be drawn the following week and announced at our site. **
Congratulations to Taleah (QLD), the winner of our Maria Mena Poster!
