Katrina Leskanich
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Katrina Leskanich (born April 10, 1960, Topeka, Kansas, United States) is an American musician and actress. She was the lead vocalist for the otherwise British band Katrina and the Waves (1983-1998), which had an international hit with Walking on Sunshine in 1985, and won the Eurovision Song Contest 1997 for the United Kingdom with Love Shine a Light, which also went to no 3 in the UK charts.
Katrina has also tried her hand as a DJ for BBC Radio 2. She was an army brat and reluctantly moved from Suffolk, England on the advice of Alex Cooper. Since 1979, she had been in a group called Mama's Cookin' which toured US Air Force bases.
In 2004, she appeared on a Eurovision Song Contest edition of The Weakest Link. Her fellow contestants included the likes of Sonia, Jessica Garlick and Jemini. Katrina managed to reach the final where she was beaten by her friend Nikki French.
Katrina continues to perform solo, and has just released her first CD since the split with the Waves. In early 2005, she formed a fresh band in a startling bid to repeat her Eurovision triumph for a different country. Katrina and the Nameless' song As If Tomorrow Will Never Come was one of the entries in the fourth semi-final of the Melodifestivalen - Sweden's national pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 in Kyiv - but failed to qualify directly for the final, and was definitively eliminated the following day in a 'second chance semi'. The group's bizarre name was a reference to the last-minute shedding of the original choice Katrina and the New Wave, following opposition from members of the original 'Waves'.
External link
- Katrina's Web (official website) (http://www.katrinasweb.net)