Hanne Boel

Among the most successful female singers in Denmark, Hanne Boel is a versatile English-language pop singer who is also popular in the neighboring countries of Sweden and Norway. Born August 31, 1957, in Bagsværd, a suburb of Copenhagen, she studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Upon graduating in 1980, she studied a year at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. She then returned to Denmark, where she taught music and performed in the jazz-rock band Blast during the early to mid-'80s. In 1988 she released her full-length album debut, Black Wolf, in association with Medley Records. A blockbuster success, Black Wolf was awarded a Danish Music Award (aka Danish Grammy) for Danish Female Singer of the Year. Her second album, Dark Passion (1990), expanded her success to the neighboring countries of Sweden and Norway. It also garnered another round of Danish Music Awards, four of them in total: Danish Female Singer of the Year, Danish Album of the Year, Hit of the Year ("I Wanna Make Love to You"), and Danish Producer of the Year (Poul Bruun). Successive albums include My Kindred Spirit (1992), Kinda Soul (1992), Misty Paradise (1994), Best of Hanne Boel (1995), Silent Violence (1996), Need (1998), and Strangely Disturbed (1999). Following the turn of the century, Boel collaborated with Martin Hall on the album Boel & Hall (2000) and reunited with Poul Bruun, the acclaimed producer of her early albums, on the commercial blockbuster effort Beware of the Dog (2002). While successive albums such as Abaco (2004), Private Eye (2007), and A New Kinda Soul (2008) failed to rival the chart-topping success of Beware of the Dog, they were internationally successful nonetheless, easily reaching the Danish Top Ten and charting impressively in Sweden and Norway as well.