Hanna Pakarinen

Hanna Helena Pakarinen (born April 17, 1981 in Lappeenranta, Finland) is a Finnish pop and pop-rock singer who rose to fame as the winner of the first series of the Finnish singing competition Idols in 2004. Since then she has represented Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 on homeland, and has sold over 91,000 certified records in Finland, which places her among the top 50 best-selling female soloists in her home country.

Biography

Early life

Hanna was born in Lappeenranta, South Karelia (though she now resides in Helsinki she still proudly speaks the local dialect of the region). Throughout her early twenties she worked as a forklift driver, an unusual occupation for a female, and was part of a local Finnish band named Rained.

Idols Series 1

In the summer of 2003, a twenty-three-year-old Pakarinen auditioned for the inaugural season of the Finnish singing competition Idols in the country's capital, Helsinki. Her powerful and emotion-filled vocals impressed the panel of judges and she was unanimously passed through to the next round of the contest, before making it through to the live finals. From the outset of the live shows, Pakarinen was considered a hot favourite to win. She received consistent high praise from the judges, and on one occasion she was even hugged by one of them. On numerous occasions they described her as, "the first real singer in the competition".

Lovers (Hanna Pakarinen album)

Lovers is the third studio album by Finnish singer Hanna Pakarinen, released in Finland by RCA on February 14, 2007. It was preceded by the lead single "Go Go" and also includes the singles "Leave Me Alone" and "Hard Luck Woman". "Leave Me Alone" served as Pakarinen's entry song in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest finals, in which she placed 17th. Following Eurovision, the album was released throughout the rest of Europe on May 23, 2007, becoming Pakarinen's first album to receive a launch outside Finland.

The album peaked at number three on the Finnish albums chart, lower than her previous two albums. However, it spent over twice as long on the chart as her second album Lovers and after selling 15,000 copies across Finland, received gold certification.

Commercial performance

Lovers debuted at number three in its first week of release, a position it held for a second consecutive week. It spent fifteen weeks on the Finnish albums chart and was accredited gold, with sales to date of 16,163. At its release, the album was Pakarinen's greatest critical success, with this being attributed to several factors, those most notable being Pakarinen's move into a much rockier image, her highly praised appearance in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, and her emergence as a songwriter, co-writing six of the eleven tracks on the album.