 THE EURODANCE ENCYCLOPAEDIA |
| Home > Encyclopaedia > Melanie Thornton | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Melanie Thornton albums
Melanie Thornton singles
FeaturingsSongwriting
Melanie Thornton biographyMelanie Janene Thornton was born in May 13th 1967 in Charleston, South Carolina. She studied voice from the age of six, played the piano and the clarinet and learned how to act and to dance. She had long dreamed of a career in music. Her parents had a friend of a friend who was a singer in Charleston. Even though she didn't get to go out and see her, she saw pictures and heard them talk about her work and heard her talk about going out on the road.When she was growing up her mother would listen to Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and The Temptations, a lot of the Motown music artists. She would mimic the female vocalists she saw on TV or heard on radio. Later, Melanie financed her College studies with appearances in talent shows and smaller band concerts. She frequented a club called The Peacock Lounge, getting up and doing jam sessions when the live band invited people up to sing. After contributing to the wedding jazz band Danger Zone in Macon, Georgia, Melanie 'fled the gigantic anonymity of America' and on the 14th February 1992 went to Germany with only 15 $ in her bag. Her sister, who lived already in Germany offered her a place to stay and a opportunity to and work with her husband's uncle Bob Chisolm, a singer and piano player. "He introduced me to a lot of musicians. I basically did freelance singing. Musicians that heard about me would call and I would go do gigs. First in jazz and blues, which was mostly the repertoire for the gigs Uncle Bob got me. That led to meeting small-time producers that were still banging out dance singles or playbacks in their basement studios" Melanie explains. On her second evening in her new homeland she was already on stage in Munich. This femme fatale completely wowed Europe with her southern charms and as a touring jazz and blues singer. "I did several studio sessions where for me it was just more income and fun work, new experiences, working in the studios, cowriting with producers on these dance songs". That's how her gorgeous voice contributed to many euro projects such as 100%, Comic or Men Behind. She did tours through Switzerland, Germany and Spain. She settled in Cologne. 1993 she met Ulli Brenner and Amir Saraf. After the first few notes Melanie sang, they all new that she would be the right female singer for their long dreamed of project, La Bouche. Melanie says : "Looking back, it seems like it happened very quickly. In the process, it really didn't blow me away. I did the studio session with Amir Saraf and Uli Brenner in November 1993. Meanwhile, I was gigging, making my money, earning my living. Two months later, they called and said a record label was interested in releasing Sweet Dreams as a single". The producer and owner of the label was Frank Farian. Meanwhile Melanie recorded one song under the project name Joy-lab. Called Freedom (Free Your Mind), it sounded a little like Robin S hot Show Me Love. Some years later, in September 2001 the single was reedited by Shift media/ZYX Music. Between 1994 and 1995, she was featured by Schnapka Connection (a band of Rolf-Dieter Schnapka). They appeared in Spaß auf der Gass, a TV show taking place on sunday evenings on SWF 3 Mainz. It was in April or May of 1994 that Sweet Dreams started making some noise in Italy. Then all of a sudden it shot up to #1. "Lane McCray came into the picture after the initial recording and after the signing and everything. When it went to #1 in Italy, it was serious. We had to get in place and start milking this product to take it as far as possible. Basically, that's what we did. I was doing less and less gigging and more and more La Bouche stuff, and I was now doing songs I'd actually recorded. That was exciting." This sudden success was great for Melanie, but to her it was like a gradual thing, a very happy feeling. She explains "It was like, "Oh, wow! This is something I dreamed of when I was six years old." But, at the same time, we were traveling so much. We really didn't have the time to soak in the momentum of our success - to soak in the hype and believe the hype. We were working really hard at this point. We would go places and people would go crazy to see us, and this was interesting. At the same time, I kind of kept in mind, "This is really great. I hope we can continue to produce music our fans love." But I always tried to keep a reality check. "This is because this song is so widely publicized and promoted. And it IS a great song, but it's more about the product at this point than ourselves." Melanie bought a house and then got married. She left la Bouche in February 2000, ending her contract with BMG, to be replaced by Natascha Wright while Lane remained a part of the project. She signed a record deal with Epic/Sony. She changed her look (cut her hair). She explains : "I think La Bouche was a wonderful opportunity - and part of me is La Bouche. But I don't just want to continue to be a dance artist, trying to be young and trendy, like dance artists have to be". She started working with a group of producers both in Germany and in the United States Her first solo single was released in October 2000 : Love How You Love Me, a ballad (but the CD-maxi included a few dance versions). The single was, as she described it, 'an open confession to the great love, a love which grows silently and lasts eternally'. Melanie presented her new single on 29th November on the RTL Spendenmarathon, and on the1st December at the Dome in Berlin. One could also chat with her on the www.funonline.de website on the 30th of November. The follow-up single was entitled Heartbeat. 2001 : Melanie released her first solo album entitled Ready To Fly on April 30th under the label X-Cell (Epic/Sony Music). According to an interview she gave and in which she explained that her favourite musical artists remained Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, we could guess that the album would not be eurodance related, unfortunately... Meanwhile she kept on doing club appearances in US clubs under the name of "Melanie Thornton, formerly of La Bouche" (she had the double nationality : American and German). Melanie's third single to be released was Ooh Ooh (Talking About Love). The song has been remixed for the single release, to have much more power than it already had. Meanwhile her first album, produced by Julien Nairolf and Mitchell Lennox, reached #18 in the charts. 24th November 2001 : Melanie died in a plane crash near Zurich. Saturday night she performed in Leipzig and then she drove to Berlin where she took the plane to Zurich for radio and TV appearances (among others, the broadcast "Die Bar" on TV3, which was cancelled) to promote her new single Wonderful Dream (Holidays Are Coming). Wonderful Dream was a Christmas ballad recorded for a Coca-Cola TV commercial. Her album was planned to be re-released on the 26th of November. Melanie was only 34 years old... 2002 : a posthumous single entitled In Your Life was released under the name of La Bouche feat Melanie Thornton. This very nice dance track was an unreleased song composed and recorded by Melanie. The single included a B-side called Take Me 2 Heaven 2 Night. Thornton is buried in Mount Pleasant Memorial Gardens, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. A Melanie Thornton Youth Arts Foundation was created in Georgia Dance Artists Infos The biography was last updated Thu, November 08th 2012 Did you like this article ? Tell your friends
Latest Melanie Thornton news07/01/2013 : "Sweet Dreams Fulfilled, The Melanie Thornton Story", the book written by Lois Thornton Chisolm, Melanie's sister, is now available as an eBook on Amazon. Samples of the ebook are available for free as well. If you don't have a kindle reader you can download the free kindle app (thanks to Lois Chisolm herself). 09/12/2012 : Lois Thornton Chisolm, Melanie Thornton's sister, is working on a book about her life entitled Sweet Dreams Fulfilled, The Melanie Thornton Story. 05/04/2009 : The Melanie Thornton Youth Arts Foundation, Inc. was named to honor the memory of Melanie Thornton, one of the most beautiful voices of eurodance. Using arts as a vehicle, they strives to ensure opportunities for youth from all backgrounds to do something creative and positive with their talents and their time (thanks to eurodance blog). 05/12/2004 : Melanie Thornton's Wonderful Dreams re-entered the German charts at #53. 14/12/2003 : Melanie Thornton with Wonderful Dream jumps up to #28 of Austrian singles chart (thanks to Denis "DJ Hooligan" Zhabkin). 27/11/2001 : On November 24th, the well-known Eurodance diva Melanie Thornton, who had taken part to projects such as La Bouche, Le Click, or Orange Blue died last saturday in a plane crash near Zurich. The Eurodance Encyclopaedia dedicates this tribute to one of the most beautiful voices in the world of Eurodance. 18/03/2001 : Melanie Thornton's new single is Heartbeat. Links to Melanie ThorntonOfficial websites Melanie Thornton official website Fansites
DISCLAIMER : unless you see the artist's name among the credits of this biography, it was only created by gathering infos from the web and from fan sources. Sorry if, even if I did all verifications I could, some parts of the biography are false or lack accuracy. If you are the artist himself or contributed to the project, please wait till I come back from holidays.
|
Search for
Melanie Thornton
items at
Juno Download
 
Melanie Thornton's videography Lois Thornton Chisolm reviews More artists of the same music style Listen to Melanie Thornton on Radio Euro Classic, the eurodance radio
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bescherelle Le chinois pour tous: Écriture, vocabulaire, grammaire
24/11/2001
LISTEN
