Dan Dana Dan Song Download |BEST|
May Sobczak
In December 1969 Tom McGrath, producer of the Irish National Song Contest, invited Scallon to try again next year, feeling that one of the entered songs, the ballad "All Kinds of Everything", would suit her. Her second attempt to win the Irish contest was a success. Then on Saturday 21 March 1970, the eighteen-year-old schoolgirl performed the song at the Eurovision finals held in the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre, before an estimated viewing audience of two hundred million. Perched on a stool while wearing an embroidered white mini-dress, she was the last of twelve contestants to perform that night. After the voting had finished she was declared the winner with 32 points, beating the favourite, UK's Mary Hopkin, with 26 and Germany's Katja Ebstein with 12. Spain's Julio Iglesias came equal fourth with Guy Bonnet of France and Henri Dès of Switzerland. This was Ireland's first of a record seven successes in the contest.
The winning song was composed by two Dublin printworkers, Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith. The single was produced by Ray Horricks and arranged by Phil Coulter. Released on 14 March, it shot to #1 in the Irish singles chart before the contest began and stayed there for nine weeks. It also spent two weeks at the top of the UK singles chart on 18 and 25 April. It was also successful in Australia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. The song went on to sell more than two million units.
Scallon's debut album All Kinds of Everything, recorded at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London, on the weekend of 25 April 1970, was released in June and included four tracks co-written by the singer, as well as a new recording of the album's title track. Her follow-up single was issued in September, but Jerry Lordan's "I Will Follow You" failed to chart. The song that put an end to her one-hit wonder status was found on the album Barry Ryan 3. "Who Put the Lights Out", written by Paul Ryan for his twin brother, was offered to her by their stepfather Harold Davison, the business partner of her agent Dick Katz. Her version, cut with Barry Ryan's producer Bill Landis, proved a strong comeback vehicle reaching #5 in Ireland. In the UK it became a #14 hit on 13 March 1971. There then followed three years of unsuccessful singles broken only by the Irish chart showing of "Sunday Monday Tuesday", a #4 hit in December 1973. This lack of success caused her agent to recommend she join the former head of Bell Records Dick Leahy on his new label, GTO Records.
She debuted on GTO with "Please Tell Him That I Said Hello", written by Mike Shepstone and Peter Dibbens. Within a month of its release in October 1974 it was #7 in Ireland. It took until the new year before making its UK chart debut in January. Boosted by Top of the Pops performances on 6 February and 13 March, it climbed to #8 on 15 March 1975. This UK success gave the track a resurgence of popularity in Ireland where it rose to #7 again, this time in February. She also recorded a German version of the song. "Spiel nicht mit mir und meinem Glück" was a #27 hit in that country the same year. Scallon made a number of foreign singles, such as "Wenn ein Mädchen verliebt ist" (German, 1971), "Tu Me Dis I Love You" (French, 1975), and a Japanese version of "It's Gonna be a Cold Cold Christmas" in 1976.
Having scored an Irish number one in January 1980 with the song that was based on the Pope's motto: Totus Tuus, Latin for Totally Yours, the much larger American Christian market became a possible outlet for her music. Not long after returning home from a promotional visit to the National Religious Broadcasters conference in Washington, opened by US President Jimmy Carter, she was contacted by award-winning songwriter Kurt Kaiser, vice president of Word Records. He invited her back to the USA where she was offered a recording contract. Meanwhile, Warwick Records issued Everything is Beautiful in late 1980. Recorded in September at Pye Studios in London, the LP subtitled 20 Inspirational Songs was advertised on TV and became her biggest-selling album in the UK, reaching #43 in the chart on 10 January 1981. It was followed later that year by Totally Yours, her first Christian album for Word Records; the songs "Praise the Lord", "The Soft Rain" and "Totus Tuus" were credited to "Dana and Damien Scallon". As was "Little Baby (Grace's Song)", written while she was pregnant with their first child.
She was soon back in the studios again to make Magic in 1982, a pop album for Lite Records made at Morgan Studios and Maison Rouge Studios in London. It included four songs by her younger brothers John and Gerald Brown, as well as the single "I Feel Love Comin' On", written by Barry White, which peaked at #66 in the UK on 22 May. Collaborating with her younger brothers they wrote the official Northern Ireland 1982 FIFA World Cup song "Yer Man", and she recorded it with the full squad before they headed to Spain for the finals. Following this, her second album for Word was completed; Let There Be Love contained up-tempo Christian pop, jazz, ballads, and an old Irish hymn sung in Gaelic called Ag Criost an Siol.
Due to work commitments in 1979, she was not in the country when Pope John Paul II became the first pope ever to visit Ireland. But she eventually saw him in 1987 at the Superdome in New Orleans, having been invited there to perform "Totus Tuus" before a gathering of 80,000 or more. After her performance the pontiff made his way to the stage to personally thank her for writing the song.
Soon after completing a concert tour of England in early 1990, she took her family to Florida for an Easter holiday. Her break was interrupted by a request to fly to Irondale, Alabama and make a guest appearance at Eternal Word Television Network's (EWTN) tenth anniversary show. Afterwards, the network's founder Mother Angelica enquired if her ex-hotelier husband would like to work there, setting up a retreat centre to look after the hundreds of visitors the network attracted each day. Then mid holiday she sang at a Rosary Rally in Palm Beach, and was asked to write a theme song for the Rosary. The result was The Rosary, an album released with Heart Beat Records in 1991 that has amassed over a million sales around the world.
To help celebrate the sixth World Youth Day event held in Cherry Creek State Park, Denver in 1993, she was invited to sing in the presence of Pope John Paul II the theme song for the occasion, "We Are One Body", a song she composed herself. She also sang at the World Youth Day celebrations held in Paris in 1997, Toronto in 2002 and Sydney in 2008.
Returning to the world of entertainment in 2005, she spent seven weeks on the RTÉ television series The Afternoon Show, where she did a fitness routine with a trainer and lost fifteen pounds in weight in time for her eldest daughter's wedding. In 2006, she and dancer Ronan McCormack were paired together in the RTÉ dance series Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels. They made it to the final show and came second. That same year, Scallon and her husband launched their own music label, DS Music Productions.[19] One of the first albums released was Totus Tuus, a compilation of songs dedicated to the memory of Pope John Paul II and issued on the anniversary of his death. A children's album was released in 2007, along with a DVD in 2008, titled Good Morning Jesus: Prayers & Songs for Children of All Ages, which featured in a special series on EWTN. The Scallons and their new label were sued in 2007 by Heart Beat Records for copyright violations on several of the albums they'd recently released.[20]
After consolidating her initial commercial success with the albums Umpatampa (1994) and Maganuna (1996), she was selected in 1998 to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest with her song "Diva". Placing first at the international competition, she came to public attention throughout Europe.
Dana following up this success with the albums Free (1999), Yoter VeYoter (2001), HaHalom HaEfshari (2002) and Hakol Ze Letova (2007), she represented Israel in Eurovision a second time in 2011, this time with the song "Ding Dong", which failed to make it into the final. The same year, she became a judge on the Israeli television music talent contest Kokhav Nolad.[1]
Though assigned male at birth, she identified as female from a very young age. She wanted to become a singer from the age of eight, when she watched Israeli singer Ofra Haza perform her song "Chai" in the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest.[citation needed] Although the family was quite poor, her mother worked to pay for her music lessons, and she stated that her childhood was happy. She came out as transgender at the age of 13.
At 18 years of age, Cohen (still legally male at the time) earned a living as a drag queen, parodying many famous female singers. During one of her performances, she was discovered by Offer Nissim, a well-known Israeli DJ, who produced her debut single "Saida Sultana" ("The Great Saida"), a satirical version of Whitney Houston's song "My Name Is Not Susan".[5] The song received considerable exposure and helped launch her career as a professional singer.[5]
In 1995, Dana attempted to fulfill her childhood dream of performing in the Eurovision Song Contest.[9] She entered the Eurovision qualifying contest in Israel with a song entitled "Layla Tov, Eropa" ("Good Night Europe") which finished second in the pre-selections, but became another hit single.
Dana was chosen to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 1998 in Birmingham with the song "Diva". Orthodox Jews and others with conservative views were opposed to the choice and attempted to void her participation in the contest. In May 1998, Dana performed "Diva" at the Eurovision final and won the contest with 172 points. She became known internationally, and was interviewed by CNN, BBC, Sky News, and MTV among others mostly focusing on her life as a transsexual person before winning the contest. Dana's own words "the message of reconciliation" were; "My victory proves God is on my side. I want to send my critics a message of forgiveness and say to them: try to accept me and the kind of life I lead. I am what I am and this does not mean I don't believe in God, and I am part of the Jewish Nation."[11]
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