Christina Stürmer

Christina Stürmer (born June 9, 1982) is an Austrian pop/rock singer and also the name of her band.

After working at a book shop in Linz and singing in several bands, she reached #2 in Starmania, an Austrian Music-Casting TV show. Her first song was "Ich lebe", published in 2003, which was very successful in Austria and was followed by several #1 hits.

In 2004 the song "Vorbei" reached the German Top 100, and in April 2005, a new version of "Ich lebe" was produced especially for the German and Austrian market. That song reached very high positions in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, making Christina Stürmer well-known in the German-speaking countries. 2006 was her most successful year. She sold more than 1.5 million copies of her CDs in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and South Tyrol.

Christina came from a very musical family. At the age of thirteen she already played the saxophone in a Jazz band. In addition to the saxophone, she also played the transverse flute. Since 1998 she sang in a cover band which she had founded, named Scotty which played mostly English language music. She was also a member of an acapella group named Sulumelina. After dropping out of high school, Christina began an apprenticeship with the bookstore, Amadeus. A few months after that she applied to Starmania.

In 2003 Stürmer - who fans named "little Christina" - won second place in Starmania behind Michael Tschuggnall. Shortly after that she released her first original song, Ich Lebe, which in 2003 occupied the number one spot on the Austrian music charts for nine weeks.

After Ich Lebe followed two more highly sucessful singles: Geh nicht wenn du kommst and the anti-war song Mama (ana Ahabak) which originated during the war in Iraq. The song represents a little Iraqi girl's persective of the war, and it also spent nine weeks at the number one spot on the Austrian charts. Her first album, Frier Fall, was released exclusively in Austria in May 2003, and it also rose quickly to the top of the charts, where it occupied the number one spot for weeks. In fall of 2003 she did an Austrian Tour behind the strength of her first album.

In May of 2004 her second album, Soll das wirklich alles sein, appeared, again only in Austria. The album was even more sucessful than Frier Fall, but the album's singles, however, had only average sales figures. The Wirklich alles! -Tour in Austria followed in the fall. The highpoint of the tour was the concert in the Vienna city hall in November, which sold out all 11,000 tickets in an very short time. The concert was filmed, and along with some interviews and a short biography, was released in DVD form as Das wirklich alles! During the club tour that was begun directly after the Vienna concert, she presented for the first time her own original compositions, which she had written with her band.

Mit ihren Managern Andreas Streit und Bernd Rengelshausen arbeitete Stürmer in dieser Zeit bereits daran den Durchbruch auch in Deutschland zu schaffen. Die Single Vorbei wurde im November 2004 in Deutschland veröffentlicht, blieb aber hinter den Erwartungen zurück. Erst Ich lebe, am 25. April 2005 in einer überarbeiteten Version auf den deutschen Markt gebracht, wurde zum Erfolg, stieg auf Platz neun in die deutschen Charts ein und erreichte kurz darauf Platz vier.

At this time, Christina and her managers, Andreas Streit and Bernd Rengleshausen, were working towards breaking through in Germany. The single Vorbei was released in Germany in November 2004, but it fell short of expectations. In April of 2005 a re-worked version of Ich Lebe was released in Germany. This single met with great sucess; it rose to the ninth place on the German charts, and shortly thereafter reached number four.

The album which followed, named Schwarz Weiss (released in June 2005 in Germany and Switzerland), reached number three on the German album charts, and stayed in the top twenty for more than a year. The majority of the songs on this album, which were mostly already known in Austria, were reproduced and oriented towards the emerging trends in German rock and pop music. The singles were Engel fliegen Einsam, Mama (Ana Ahabak), and Immer an euch geglaubt. The singles were also re-recorded to be more rock oriented. In late 2005 Christina and her band toured throught Germany and Switzerland. The Schwarz-Weiss tour, with just under 40 concerts, lasted two months, in which some concerts had to be relocated to larger halls because of the great demand for tickets. Christina Stürmer and her band had established themselves as a major group.

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