Tina Arena

Tina Arena biography

Tina Arena (born Filippina Lydia Arena; 1 November 1967) is an Australian singer, songwriter and musical theatre actress. She has won several awards, most notably 6 ARIA Awards and in both 1996 and 2000 she received the World Music Award for the world's best selling Australian artist. She has sold over eight million records worldwide to date. Tina has accepted the position of judge on the 2011 reboot of Young Talent Time in Australia. The original 1977 series made her a household name.

Early life

Arena was born to Italian immigrants, Giuseppe and Franca Arena, living in the Melbourne suburb of East Keilor, Victoria. She has two sisters, Nancy and Silvana. Her family calls her Pina which evolved into her stage name, Tina. Arena attended St. Columba's College, Melbourne, in Essendon, from 1980 and graduated in 1985.

Music career

1974-1983: Young Talent Time

Arena began her career as a 7-year-old, singing live on the variety television show Young Talent Time. Even as a young girl she was known for her powerful voice and stage presence, but she dropped from sight for several years following her Young Talent Time tenure, working the club circuit alone and in bands and also appearing in musicals.

1988-1991: Strong as Steel

In 1987, at the age of 20, she was reinvented as a raunchy disco diva with the national Number 3 platinum selling single "I Need Your Body". It gave her a successful album, Strong as Steel, and more hits, but for Tina this was a momentary digression, as this was not a music style or image with which she was comfortable with.

1994-1996:'Don't Ask''

After a couple of years, Arena broke the stigma of a TV childhood and carved out a successful solo career with Columbia Records. The David Tyson-produced ''Don't Ask'' was Australia's biggest selling album of 1995 and one of the biggest selling album by any Australian female singer to date. ''Don't Ask'' sold over five million copies worldwide and was certified 10 times platinum in Australia.

1997-2000: ''In Deep'' and ''Notre Dame de Paris''

The follow-up album, ''In Deep'', produced by Foreigner's Mick Jones, was also a multi-platinum success. The singles "I Want to Know What Love Is" and "Burn" even had minor success in some U.S. airplay charts and Arena's songwriting abilities were particularly well noted in Nashville where a number of pedigreed country music artists have since covered her songs, including Wynonna Judd ("Heaven Help My Heart", "Love's Funny That Way"), Jo Dee Messina ("Burn"), Pam Tillis ("If I Didn't Love You"), Terri Clark ("Unsung Hero"), Kellie Coffey, Kathie Baillie ("Love's Funny That Way") and LeAnn Rimes ("You Made Me Find Myself").

Arena's collaboration with Marc Anthony, "I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You", from ''The Mask of Zorro'' soundtrack, gave her a new kind of European success, tipping the scales of her success in France where both the song and the album became Top 3, which the album peaked at #3 and was certified 3í— Platinum in France. Her first French single "Aller plus haut" has sold 1 million copies in France and peaked at #2 on the French singles chart, her second French single "Les trois cloches" was released in 2000, which peaked at #4.

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