Jennifer Rush

Jennifer Rush (1988)

Jennifer Rush (* 28. September 1960 as Heidi Stern in New York City ) is an American rock and pop singer. In the 1980s, it was particularly successful in German-speaking countries . It was in 1984 with the ballad The Power of Love known, later, among others, Laura Branigan and Celine Dion gecovert was.

Life

Childhood and beginnings

Rush was born in Astoria , New York, in 1960 . Music was very important to her family; her father Maurice sang tenor at the New York City Opera , her mother Barbara was a pianist. Jennifer Rush played first violin in a gifted orchestra and learned to play the violin at the Juilliard School of Music . She has two siblings: saxophonist Bobby Stern and Stevie Stern, who is also in the music industry.

Since Rush's father believed that New York was too dangerous for his children, he looked for a job in Germany . The children had no knowledge of German, but the family moved to Flensburg . Nine-year-old Jennifer first attended elementary school there for a year, and later with her brother the Waldorf School in Rendsburg . After a year she went to the American school in Wiesbaden . She stayed there for a year, because then her parents divorced. At 15, Rush decided to live with her mother in New York and graduated from high school in the United States .

After graduating from high school, Rush moved into a shared apartment with three people and took odd jobs. Then her father moved to Seattle and she moved in with her brother Stevie. For a year, the two toured the country with a pop band, Stevie as guitarist, Jennifer as singer. Her brother Bobby, who had stayed in Munich and made a name for himself there as a studio musician, finally brought her to his place to put her in touch with major record companies . Rush stayed with her stepmother Rita Loving for a year; There she met her future fiancé Steve Engebretson , the bass player of the Jochen Brauer Sextet, during her first gig with a big band .

Private life

In 1993, Rush's daughter was born. After living in Munich and New York for a few years , Rush moved her to London in 2006 . In 2012 she sold her apartment in Manhattan, New York .

Career

breakthrough

Rush had recorded an album under her real name Heidi Stern in 1979, but it was not a success. Under the stage name Jennifer Rush, the single 25 Lovers released in the spring of 1984 was her first single hit . Her German producer team , Gunther Mende and Candy de Rouge , composed melodic pop songs for her.

In January 1985 the ballad The Power of Love hit the charts and became an international success. The song became the UK's best-selling solo artist single in British record industry history. It earned Jennifer Rush a diamond record and entry into the Guinness Book of Records . In Germany, the single stayed in the charts for almost seven months with interruptions from the end of January 1985 to mid-February 1986, while in Spain both the English and the Spanish version were in the top 10 at the same time.

The first album, Jennifer Rush , soon found number 2 in the German charts and was also a top 10 success in Great Britain. In Scandinavia, the LP also took top positions and Rush became very popular there alongside Germany and South Africa. In Germany, the LP stayed in the charts for two years, reached double platinum and posted another number one hit in South Africa and continental single success in Europe with the disco song Ring of Ice . Their success waned in the UK, while it continued in the rest of Europe and South Africa.

In the summer of 1985, the top five hit Destiny was released . The second album Movin 'was announced, which entered the charts at number 1 in Germany and Scandinavia. It was awarded three times platinum, the best-selling album of the year in Germany and contained another single hit with the ballad If You're Ever Gonna Lose My Love . In South Africa she was also successful with the song Madonna's Eyes . In the wake of Movin ' success , the first album Jennifer Rush climbed back into the charts and in November 1985 both LPs were simultaneously among the top three positions in the German album charts. For most of her songs, Jennifer Rush had collaborated on both the music and the lyrics.

A sold out tour of Germany began in autumn 1985, for which she was awarded the very rare platinum ticket for a particularly large number of concert tickets sold. At the end of the year, Jennifer Rush was awarded the Golden Europe in the Pop category. What she still wanted was success in her native USA, where her European-sounding songs had been classified as housewife music. To do this, she moved back to New York, changed the production team and worked with successful US songwriters such as Rick Nowels (including Madonna , Belinda Carlisle ) or Desmond Child (including Bon Jovi , Cher ), and Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora took over the guitar parts. The result was a very American sounding, guitar-heavy pop-rock album, which, like the previous albums, was very melodic.

The album Heart over Mind rose to number 1 in the German charts in the spring of 1987, like its predecessor, and held this position for twelve weeks. It was awarded double platinum for over 1 million copies sold and was ranked second among the best-selling albums of the year in Germany. In Scandinavia the record was also a bestseller, whereas in America it was largely unsuccessful. Only the decoupled duet with Elton John Flames of Paradise brought her a little respectable success in the United States. The fans in Europe and South Africa stayed loyal to her, Flames of Paradise became a Top 10 hit and she was also successful in Germany with the cover song I Come Undone (orig. 1983 by Ellen Shipley and Morrie Brown ) and the title song of the album. The 1987 tour was extremely successful with over 200,000 tickets sold in Germany alone. Rush gave several additional concerts. Fans and critics alike praised Jennifer Rush's voice, which did not show any weaknesses live. For this she was awarded the Berolina Music Prize in 1987 as the most successful singer of the year.

The album Passion , which was released in the late summer of 1988, was recorded again with American songwriters: Ric Wake (including Anastacia , Celine Dion ), Harold Faltermeyer and Jellybean Benitez (including Madonna), with Jennifer Rush continuing to write the lyrics. The pre-orders were enormous and Passion had already achieved gold status in Germany before it was released, and then platinum a few weeks after it was released. With You're My One and Only it also contained a single hit again, although the single sales slowly declined. With Same Heart there was also a duet on the album with Michael Bolton, who was still unknown in Europe at the time . In November 1988, Jennifer Rush received the Bambi for best pop artist.

In autumn 1989 the fifth album Wings of Desire was released, which was very soulful and was awarded gold in Germany. At the same time, Rush had another hit single in Great Britain after four years with the classic pop number Till I Loved You in a duet with the Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo (# 24 in the charts).

In the early 1990s, Jennifer Rush was quiet because she hadn't renewed her record deal with Sony Music. But she was seen for the first time on the big screen in 1990 in a guest appearance in the film Fire, Ice & Dynamite , in which Roger Moore played the leading role.

The best-of album The Power of Jennifer Rush was released in autumn 1991 on the initiative of the record company and received a gold record in Germany. Rush, meanwhile switched to the record company EMI , did not return until the fall of 1992 with the album Jennifer Rush , which contained the dynamic pop-rock song Never Say Never , which was only a moderate single success. The album, which was recorded again with well-known American producers such as Rick Nowels and Desmond Child, could not build on its old successes either.

In early 1995, Rush returned to the charts with the album Out of My Hands , which combined pop, dance and soul across styles. With the guitarist of the band Queen , Brian May , she re-recorded the Queen classic Who Wants to Live Forever for this record , which was only released in the Netherlands. The first single released in Germany, the ballad Tears in the Rain , helped the album to better sales figures than its predecessor and made it into the top 15 of the German album charts. The title melody of the ARD series The Court Reporter also comes from this album, Cry Baby . In 1996, Jennifer Rush sang a promotional tune for the car manufacturer Daewoo and, for the first time, sang the song “ Farbenspiel des Winds” from the cartoon Pocahontas in German .

In the spring of 1997 the album Credo followed , which mainly contained gospel and Afro - American songs. The album Classics , released at the end of 1998, contains some of their greatest hits, classically re-recorded with the Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra and new material. After eleven years, Rush went on a tour of Germany again in 1999, which was sold out. The singer was awarded six gold and eleven platinum records in the course of her career. In Germany alone, their phonograms were awarded twice gold and eight times platinum.

In August 2007, the SonyBMG record company released the 3-CD collection Stronghold - The Collector's Hit Box , which contains their great 1980s hits and some rarities. In addition to a new remix of I Come Undone , two songs from her time as Heidi Stern can be found on the compilation . The box also contains some B-sides from Jennifer Rush singles from the early 1980s, which have never been released on CD either. Many of their big hits are represented in rare maxi versions.

Rush announced her musical comeback several times on her website, and from 2007 she worked on new songs in a London studio. Their first studio album in 13 years, Now Is the Hour , was finally released in March 2010, reached number 21 in Germany, but only stayed in the German charts for five weeks. The sales figures remained below expectations, especially since she no longer had a single hit.

Discography

→ Main article : Jennifer Rush / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1984	Jennifer Rush	DE2 × 2 Double platinum (107 weeks)DE	AT5 (25 weeks) AT	CH3 platinum (25 weeks)CH	UK7th platinum (35 weeks)UK	-	First published: September 1984 Sales: + 1,565,000
1985	Movin '	DE1 × 3 Triple platinum (67 weeks)DE	AT8 (28 weeks) AT	CH1 platinum (29 weeks)CH	UK32 (5 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 1985 Sales: + 1,550,000
1987	Heart over Mind	DE1 × 2 Double platinum (54 weeks)DE	AT9 (26 weeks) AT	CH1 platinum (34 weeks)CH	UK48 (3 weeks) UK	US118 (10 weeks) US	First published: February 13, 1987 Sales: + 1,100,000
1988	passion	DE3 platinum (23 weeks)DE	AT24 (2 weeks) AT	CH4th gold (16 weeks)CH	-	-	First published: September 1988 Sales: + 525,000
1989	Wings of Desire	DE12 gold (21 weeks)DE	-	CH13 gold (7 weeks)CH	-	-	First published: Nov 27, 1989 Sales: + 275,000
1992	Jennifer Rush	DE35 (11 weeks) DE	-	CH38 (3 weeks) CH	-	-	First published: October 30, 1992
1995	Out of my hands	DE15 (16 weeks) DE	AT30 (3 weeks) AT	CH28 (9 weeks) CH	-	-	First published: February 9, 1995
1997	Creed	DE26 (9 weeks) DE	AT37 (2 weeks) AT	-	-	-	First published: March 24, 1997
2010	Now is the hour	DE21 (5 weeks) DE	AT51 (1 week) AT	CH61 (2 weeks) CH	-	-	First published: March 5, 2010

More albums

• 1979: Heidi (as Heidi Stern)

swell

1. ↑ Manhattan Transfers: Pop Star Jennifer Rush's San Remo Spread Is a Hit With Buyers , observer.com , August 22, 2012
2. ↑ Fairytale late start of a Franconian song , mainpost.de, October 4, 2005
3. ^ The Power of Love , chartsurfer.de
4. ↑ Jennifer Rush at Discogs (English)
5. ↑ News ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Jennifer Rush's homepage  
6. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
7. ↑ Gold & Platinum Awards 1987 . In: Music and Media . American Radio History Archive. December 26, 1987. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
8. ↑ Gold & Platinum Awards 1987 . In: Music and Media . American Radio History Archive. December 26, 1987. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
9. ↑ Gold & Platinum Awards 1987 . In: Music and Media . American Radio History Archive. December 26, 1987. Retrieved January 1, 2020.

Web links

Commons : Jennifer Rush  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Official website of Jennifer Rush (English and German)
• Jennifer Rush at Allmusic (English)
• Jennifer Rush at Discogs (English)
• Literature by and about Jennifer Rush in the catalog of the German National Library
• Heidi Stern at Discogs (English)