Katerine Avgoustakis

Katerine
Background information
Birth name	Katerine Avgoustakis
Born	(1983-09-16) 16 September 1983 Maasmechelen, Belgium
Genres	Pop, dance
Years active	2002–present
Labels	Universal Music Belgium, Mostiko
Website	Official website (Dutch)/(English)

Katerine Avgoustakis (Greek: Κατερίνα Αυγουστάκη) (16 September 1983) is a Greek-Belgian solo singer of Greek origin and winner of the 2005 Star Academy show in Belgium.

Early life

Avgoustakis was born in Maasmechelen, Belgium to a Greek father and a Flemish mother, who died in 2005, at 54 years old, after a long struggle with liver cancer. She plays the piano and used to be in a choir.

Career

2002–2006: Indiana, Star Academy and Katerine

Katerine Avgoustakis made her singing debut as a member of the band Indiana in 2002, with whom she participated in the national final to represent Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 with the song "Imitation Love". Indiana failed to make it through the selection's semi-final round.^[1]

After leaving Indiana, she entered Star Academy in Flanders in 2005. She worked her way to the finale and won the contest and a record contract with Universal Music Belgium. Avgoustakis's debut single "New Day", released in July 2005 in Belgium, peaked at #2 in the Belgian UltraTop 50 chart. "New Day" was written and produced by Regi Penxten & Filip Vandueren, the team behind Milk Inc. Three months later, she received the TMF Flanders award for Best New National Artist for the song. Also the song was certified gold in Belgium. Her self-named debut album Katerine was released on 14 November 2005 in Belgium. The album is to be released in May in the Netherlands. Due the 'unexpected' sudden death of her mother, her second single, Here Come All the Boys, was delayed to be released in October 2005. This is the first single she also released in the Netherlands, that peaked at #89 in the Dutch Mega Singles Top 100. The song is also featured on the hits compilation HitBox, which was released on 13 March 2006, containing hits like Ricky Martin's "I Don't Care", Rihanna's "If It's Lovin' That You Want" and the Michael Jackson cover "Say Say Say (Waiting 4 U)" by Hi_Tack.

Cover of Avgoustakis's debut solo single "New Day".

In 2006 Katerine was nominated for 3 TMF Awards: Best pop music national, best female artist national and best music video national. She won best pop music and best female artist, the award best musicvideo national was going to Nailpin, a Belgium rock band.

Katerine also won the first Belgian pre-selection for Eurosong 2006 on 8 January 2006 with the song "Watch Me Move".

The third single from her album Katerine, "Take Me Home", was released on 4 April 2006 in Belgium, with "Watch Me Move" as B-side. The next single "Catfight" was a quick follow-up and both "Take Me Home" and "Catfight" had very strong videos.

2007–present: New album and label

In 2007, Katerine was asked for the Belgian TV program Sterren op het Ijs (a Belgian version of Stars on Ice), an opportunity she gladly accepted. She even made it to the final, but came in second. Dean Delannoit, was the winner of Idool 2007 that year.

In May 2007, she released "Live Wire", the first single from her upcoming second album and the song's music video was her first 'computer animated' video. A couple of months later she released "Don't Put It on Me" and then she and her Record Label reached a 'hiatus' and wanted to go in different directions which they did. Avgoustakis soon agreed to a new recording contract with Mostiko, which led to the single "Shut Your Mouth", with music different from her normal sounds. The single fared well in the charts charting in its first week at number three in the 'Ultratop 50'. In the following months, she released three more singles: "He's Not Like You", "Upon The Catwalk" (soundtrack from a Belgium TV channel '2BE'"Topmodel") and "Ultrasonic" Ultrasonic even made it in the Canada Dance Charts on the 2nd place! All songs from her new album OVERDRIVE, which will be presented on 6 December 2008 at Versuz discothèque in Hasselt.^[2]

Avgoustakis and Mostiko have been approached by several international labels that showed interest in her new album for which negotiations are in progress to release internationally. Avgoustakis said in an interview that an international career "would be fabulous" and that she is "... negotiating with [...] contact persons in Greece and [that] there have been releases in Spain, South Africa and Poland. [They] also got positive reactions from the Scandinavian countries, Russia and Japan".

In an interview, Avgoustakis stated that she would have liked to represent Greece at the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest. As she is not very well known in Greece, the fact that she was set to submit lyrics for one of Sakis Rouvas's national final songs for the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 introduced her name and talents.^[3]

A surprise for Katerine in March 2009: for her record company she sang "Ayo Technology" for a children's CD, but the song was picked up by radio stations in Poland. Not much later, the song was in the Polish top 5 and Avgoustakis had her first international hit and also first number-one single.

8 August 2009 in Sopot using the track "Ayo Technology" won the contest for the International Hit Summer Sopot Hit Festiwal.

In 2010 Katerine has performed a duo "Toi + Moi" with the French artist Grégoire at the Mad awards show. She is singing in a Greek and French.

Personal life

Currently, she lives in Maasmechelen. Avgoustakis used to be a beauty specialist and before that a saleswoman.

Discography

Albums

Singles

• All regularly released singles and their chart peak positions in Belgium (BEL) - UltraTop 50, Netherlands (NED) - GfK Single Top 100 and Poland (POL) - Nielsen Music Control Top 100 Bulgaria (BUL) - Nielsen Music Control Airplay Chart^[6] Russia (RUS) - Russian Top 100 Airplay Chart and Turkey (TUR) - Number One Chart Top 100

References

External links

• Official website (videos, Music, photos or contact) (Dutch)/(English)