Tic Tac Toe (band)

Tic Tac Toe
Logo from 1995
Tic Tac Toe at the fan club meeting (2005) (from left): Marlene Tackenberg, Liane Wiegelmann and Ricarda Wältken
General information
Genre (s)	Hip-hop , pop-rap , R&B
founding	1995, 1999, 2005
resolution	1997, 2000, 2007
Founding members
Rap , singing	Liane Wiegelmann
Rap, singing	Marlene Tackenberg
Rap, singing	Ricarda Wältken (until 1997, from 2005)
Rap, singing	Jasmine Busan (1995)
Last occupation
Rap, singing	Liane Wiegelmann
Rap, singing	Marlene Tackenberg
Rap, singing	Ricarda Wältken (until 1997, from 2005)
former members
Rap, singing	Sara Brahms (1999-2000)

Tic Tac Toe was a German girl group that was founded in 1995. Claudia Wohlfromm , who later became the formation's manager, had the idea for this group . After two successful albums, the band split in 1997. From 2005 to 2007 there was a comeback .

Members

• Lee: Liane Claudia Wiegelmann, née Springer (born July 29, 1974 in Iserlohn )
• Jazzy : Marlene Victoria Tackenberg (born August 4, 1975 in Gelsenkirchen )
• Ricky : Ricarda Nonyem Priscilla Wältken (born February 24, 1978 in Dortmund ) (until 1997 and from 2005)
• Sara : Sara Brahms (born July 24, 1978 in Brighton , England) (from 1999 to 2000)

History of the group and the plant

Tic Tac Toe with band manager Claudia Wohlfromm (2nd from right) (1997)

According to her record company, Tic Tac Toe were discovered in 1995 in a hip-hop competition in the Ruhr area , in which Lee was the only woman to take part. Then Ricky and Jazzy had come spontaneously to the stage and had together with Lee rapped . After the performance, the three would have received a record deal. Since it was never known when and where the music festival in question was supposed to have taken place, this version of the band's formation is to be regarded as a legend. Jazzy told Goodbye Germany in November 2015 how the founding actually came about: A friend invited her to a spontaneous disco evening in Dortmund, at which Lee, Ricky and the later manager Claudia Wohlfromm were also present, whose attention she had attracted, whereupon Wohlfromm asked whether Jazzy could sing. She said no, but said she could rap. The record deal was signed a month later.

There are many indications that the group was specifically put together by management as part of a casting. In the newspaper Die Woche the journalist Lucas Koch described the founding phase of Tic Tac Toe as follows based on his own research: “The trio was not discovered at a hip-hop competition, but each singer was selected individually for the project. Three days of brainstorming on the beach in Portugal, test recordings, record deal. ”In 1997 Jasmin Busan, who had been part of the original line-up in 1995, reported in an RTL interview that the band initially consisted of five girls. Busan left the band before the first single was released due to a laryngitis lasting several weeks.

The first two albums Tic Tac Toe (1996) and Klappe die 2te (1997) sold almost three million times. In 1996, the three of them made a guest appearance on RTL Soap Good Times, Bad Times . The release of the second album was overshadowed by numerous negative reports after initial success. First it came out that the three singers of Tic Tac Toe had been certified by the record company of the wrong age; for example, Lee was already 22 years old and married, although the record company said she should only have turned 18. Medial great sensation became the band, as Lee's then husband for relationship problems suicide committed. A week later it was revealed that Lee had worked briefly as a prostitute to use the money to finance drugs .

On November 21, 1997, at a press conference in Munich against the background of these revelations, unity was to be demonstrated; instead there was a fight between the three band members in front of the camera. Some journalists initially suspected a new publicity gag. This action was thematized in the evening's topics of the day . After the scandal, Ricky left the band.

The subsequent attempts by both Ricky and Jazzy and Lee to be commercially successful again in the music industry failed. With a new line-up as Sara @ Tic Tac Two, they made a comeback with the single Never Again . A little later the group renamed itself again to Tic Tac Toe, Sara Brahms replaced Ricky and a new comeback was started. With the album Is the reputation first ruined ... and the single of the same name could not build on earlier successes. The second single Isch liebe disch was able to place in the top 20 of the German charts. The third single Tomorrow is Yesterday was commercially unsuccessful. The record deal was not renewed. The group then broke up.

Comeback and separation again

Tic Tac Toe in the ZDF television garden (2006)

In December 2005, Tic Tac Toe released the single Spiegel in the original formation , which reached number seven in the German charts. Kalle Schwensen from Hamburg was responsible for the reunification of the group , who also acted as manager of the band with A One Entertainment as a record label. In February 2006 the last album was released with Comeback , which received positive reviews, but was not commercially successful. The subsequent tour was shortened by the concert promoter from ten to three performances due to a lack of demand. A revised version of the song No Hunch , which appeared as the second release after Spiegel , flopped and was the first tic-tac-toe single to fail to make it into the German top 100. On January 31, 2007, the management declared the tic-tac-toe career over.

After the final separation of the band, Lee completed an apprenticeship as a security specialist in 2009 and then worked for the training company as an employee at the Cologne Zoo. Then she supported the Cologne Adler training center in planning future projects and withdrew from the public.

Jazzy worked on various solo projects. From September 2010 to June 2011 she played in the musical Starcut in the Delphi Showpalast Hamburg. In January 2012, she took part as a contestant in the sixth season of I'm a Star - Get Me Out of Here! part and then retired to the Balearic island of Mallorca. She now lives with her family on the Côte d'Azur .

Ricky began primary school teacher training with subjects in mathematics and evangelical theology . However, she broke off the course she had started because she disliked the training system.

2012: Commercial shoot for Sixt

In September 2012, Jazzy and Ricky shot a commercial for Sixt AG in which their debut single in Ich find Sixt sch…! was changed. Since Lee could not be contacted, she was replaced with a double during filming. In November 2012, the commercial was released on YouTube. However, the commercial is not a tic-tac-toe comeback, as no further musical projects are planned.

criticism

At the time of publication, it was new for the German market for young women to express themselves obscenely and in German on the topics of relationships, role models, gender struggle and sex. In doing so, the three of them took on a development that had already been followed by contemporary R&B singers in the USA . Without exception, the songs received little approval from music critics, without this having detracted from their success. They are designed for provocation with titles like Fick 'dich mich or I think you shit . With the song Schubidamdam the band responded to the resulting accusation that their songs contained too many swear words. Other songs contain striking social criticism: Lick me on the A, B, toe calls for the use of condoms to protect against AIDS , Why? deals with the crash of a drug addict from the perspective of a friend, and Please don't kiss me deals with child abuse .

Discography

→ Main article : Tic Tac Toe (band) / Discography  and list of songs by Tic Tac Toe

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)			Remarks
		DE	AT	CH
1996	Tic Tac Toe	DE3 × 2 Double platinum (76 weeks)DE	AT3 platinum (39 weeks)AT	CH4th × 2 Double platinum (65 weeks)CH	First published: April 15, 1996 Sales: +1,150,000
1997	Flip the 2nd also known as: § (Jazzy Lee Ricky)	DE1 × 2 Double platinum (43 weeks)DE	AT2 platinum (33 weeks)AT	CH1 × 2 Double platinum (31 weeks)CH	First published: April 21, 1997 Sales: + 1,200,000
2000	Is the reputation only ruined ...	DE34 (8 weeks) DE	AT50 (1 week) AT	CH92 (3 weeks) CH	First published: May 29, 2000
2006	comeback	DE25 (2 weeks) DE	AT26 (5 weeks) AT	CH43 (3 weeks) CH	First published: February 17, 2006

Awards

• Comet
  • 1996: in the category: Newcomer National
  • 1997: in the Act National category
• echo
  • 1997: in the category: Group (Pop) National
  • 1998: in the category: Hit of the year for the song Why?
• RSH gold
  • 1997: in the category: Most successful German-speaking group

literature

• Claudia A. Wohlfromm: Tic Tac Toe. Free at your face. Live tour (paperback). Egmont vgs Verlagsgesellschaft, Cologne 1997. ISBN 3-8025-2518-3 .

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b} TTT on Musicline ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2012 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. 
2. ↑ TIC TAC TOE - Jasmin Busan
3. ↑ Thomas Hüetlin: The block knows no mercy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1997 ( online ).
4. ↑ Tic Tac Toe press conference. Retrieved January 18, 2020 (German). 
5. ↑ From "Tic Tac Toe" to the zoo. In: Gala.de
6. ↑ Successful safety specialist!  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ schschsch.de
8. ↑ "Tic Tac Toe" are making their comeback. In: Frauenzimmer.de via archive.org. March 8, 2016, accessed July 9, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Are Tic Tac Toe still that snotty? In: bild.de
10. ↑ A rare conversation with the inventor of Germany's largest girl group: Tic Tac Toe , Noisey / VICE
11. ↑ RSH Gold Award 1997

Web links

Commons : Tic Tac Toe  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Tic Tac Toe at laut.de.
• Extensive discography