Jasmin Wagner

Born in Hamburg to a German father and a Croatian mother, she began performing as a cheerleader for the Hamburg Blue Angels, a squad associated with the Hamburg Blue Devils American football team.

In 1995, when she was just 15, she started her musical career under the name Blümchen. She became the most successful German female singer of the 1990s. She also released singles and albums in other German-speaking countries, Scandinavia and Asia.

The first release was the debut studio album Herzfrequenz in 1996, preceded by the chart hit "Herz an Herz", a Paso Doble cover version. This was followed by the singles "Kleiner Satellit (Piep, Piep)", "Boomerang", "Du und Ich", all becoming chart successes. In 1996, Wagner released her first English language single, the only single released as Blümchen and Blossom, the Queen cover version "Bicycle Race". The release of the latter paved the way for Wagner's career for the international releases under the moniker Blossom, with the release of the studio album Heartbeat, Herzfrequenz's counterpart, along with the English versions of "Herz an Herz" and "Du und Ich", the singles "Heart to Heart" and "You and me". "Bicycle Race" has also been included on a Queen tribute cover compilation album titled Queen Dance Traxx I, which also featured an ensemble cast song, labeled as Acts United, "We are the Champions".

In 1997, Wagner released her second studio album Verliebt... alongside its english language counterpart In Love... as Blossom. Singles from Verliebt... have been the Nena cover "Nur geträumt", "Verrückte Jungs" and "Gib mir noch Zeit" ("Just a dream" and "Give me more Time" as Blossom). Later the album Verliebt..., sublabeled as "Die Fanedition", has been re-released with a reworked cover art, a bonus medley and a new song, the single "Sesam-Jam (Der, Die, Das)", which samples the German versions' Sesame Street theme.

In 1998, she released her eponymous third studio album Jasmin, which features the three singles "Blaue Augen", an Ideal cover, "Ich bin wieder hier", a Rozalla cover, and "Es ist vorbei". The album marks a soft departure from a happy hardcore and techno sound to a more pop and dance sound. In 1998, she also contributed to the charity single "Let the Music Heal Your Soul" as part of the supergroup Bravo All Stars.

In 1999, the album Jasmin has been re-released with a reworked cover art, along with two new songs, the singles "Heut' ist mein Tag" and "Tu es mon île", a French language version of "Du bist die Insel", which previously appeared on the Verliebt... album. The same year, Wagner released her first and only Live album "Live in Berlin", which featured a previously unreleased song, the Christmas single "Unter'm Weihnachtsbaum".

In 2000, Wagner released her fourth studio album Die Welt gehört Dir, which features the three singles "Ist deine Liebe echt?", "Die Welt gehört mir" and "Ich vermisse Dich", which latter mentioned served as her farewell single as Blümchen to end up a chapter.

Before stopping releasing music as Blümchen, the greatest hits compilation album Für Immer und Ewig alongside a previously unreleased song, the promotional single "Es ist nie vorbei" featuring Swedish artist E-Type, has been released. Wagner also appeared on the 2001 charity single "Die Stadt mit der Nase im Wind" as part of the supergroup Hamburg Allstars. In 2001, she appeared on a Norwegian rock bands' Turbonegro tribute cover album Alpha Motherfuckers with the song "Are you Ready for some Darkness" featuring Die Ärzte member Bela B..[3] Due to the drastic departure from her previous techno sound to an independent rock sound, Wagner used the stage name Denim Girl for the first and only time.

The same year, Wagner released her first and only promotional single mononymously as Jasmin, the Christmas song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", an Eddie Cantor cover, which was only available exclusively at Tchibo stores.[4] Wagner has also ventured into acting making cameo appearances in several movies, most notably as a race car fan in the 2001 film Driven, starring Sylvester Stallone.[5]

Blümchen, November 2006

After a brief hiatus from the music industry, Wagner returned with a new record deal on Polydor in 2003 under her real name Jasmin Wagner with the single "Leb deinen Traum" for her upcoming fifth studio album. The song proved to be a moderate success, peaking #24 at the German Single Chart, and served as the theme song for the talent show "Popstars – Das Duell".[6] For her new direction to a more mature pop rock sound, Wagner worked with a string of German well known artists and songwriters such as Inga Humpe, Peter Plate and Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen. In 2004, the second single "Helden wie wir" written by Plate followed. In 2004, Wagner performed these two singles, alongside other new tracks such as "Erster Tag", "Sonne in mir", "Schmetterling", "Lieblingslied" or "Hellwach" at Happy Family in Mannheim.[7] Other songs she presented were "Wann wenn nicht jetzt", "Frei" and "Das Meer ruft meinen Namen" in Oldenburg.[8] After album announcement delays and dissatisfied with the direction, Wagner decided to cancel the release of her untitled studio album. Still the studio recording of "Schmetterling" managed to get leaked.[9] In 2004, Wagner continued appearing on several compilation albums, such as Best of Mania, with the Olivia Newton-John cover "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and on Your Stars for Christmas with "Der kleine Stern", a German language Ciro Dammicco cover of "Soleado". Wagner also sang the title song "The Love of my Life" for the motion picture's soundtrack 7 Zwerge - Männer allein im Wald.[10]

In 2005, still at Polydor, Wagner released her first and so far only studio album Die Versuchung as Jasmin Wagner. The album's musical style features a more chanson, swing and retro 60s pop sound.[11] It features the single "Männer brauchen Liebe" and the double A-Side single, "Komm schon werd' wütend" and "Morgen, wenn Ich weg bin".[12] The album proved to be commercially unsuccessful, staying in the German Album Charts for just five weeks, which caused being dropped by Polydor afterwards. Wagner also appeared in the role of Maxi in the 2007 gangster-comedy film Breathful.

Wagner at the Berlin Film Festival in 2010

In the later years Wagner appears in several theatre productions, also providing vocals on several of its soundtracks. One of them being the song "Bis ans Ende der Welt", she recorded in 2008 with Dietmar Loeffler, on the album Männerbeschaffungsmaßnahmen. In 2010, Wagner reunited with the supergroup Hamburg Allstars, for another charity single, "You'll Never Walk Alone" and recorded the "Check Eins" theme song for channel ARD.

Her song "Boomerang" (1996) was part of an Internet campaign in early 2010 against Deutschland sucht den Superstar, the German spin-off of Pop Idol. In an attempt to prevent the winner Mehrzad Marashi's debut single, "Don't Believe", from reaching number one in the charts, "Boomerang" was purchased online en-masse, reaching #7 in the charts, higher than its 1996 peak of #11, but still not high enough to unseat "Don't Believe". This made "Boomerang" Jasmin Wagner's fifth top-ten single, over a decade after its release.[13] The campaign was presumably inspired by a similar campaign in Britain against The X Factor, where "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine was the Christmas number one in 2009.

In 2011, Wagner recorded the song "Oh, dieser Sound", a Superpunk cover, for its Superpunk tribute compilation album. The participation in the 2011 play "Alexandra - Glück und Verhängnis eines Stars" about the famous German singer Alexandra, where Wagner was playing the lead role, produced a soundtrack tribute album in 2012 to the late singer, exclusively distributed through Reader's Digest.[14] She also appeared as a featured artist on the Wise Guys's song "Küss mich" on their 2014 studio album Achterbahn. This feature marks the last time, Wagner has been credited as Jasmin Wagner, before returning as Blümchen in 2019.

In 2019, after a hiatus, Wagner returned as Blümchen and released her first single "Computerliebe", again a Paso Doble cover version. In 2019, Wagner re-recorded a new version of her debut single "Herz an Herz" with Ray Kuba, which was remixed by the band Marquess. For this release, she recorded the verses of the Paso Doble original version, which were absent in the 1995 version. She also collaborated with David Hasselhoff on the 2019 single "(You Made the) Summer Go Away".

Wagner's Blümchen and Blossom songs varied from around 50 BPM to about 200 BPM and they range from many genres of music, such as Techno, Dance, Rave, Happy Hardcore, Pop and Eurodance, mixed with simple melodies and lyrics. Although she also released pop ballads such as "Gib mir noch Zeit", "Es ist vorbei" or "Ich vermisse Dich". During Wagner's career, she experimented with different other genres and styles, such as 2-step ("Automatisch", "U-Bahn"), house ("Immer noch verliebt"), disco ("Ist deine Liebe echt"), reggae fusion ("(You made the) Summer go Away") or indie rock ("Are you Ready for some Darkness"). While Wagner's albums Herzfrequenz and Verliebt... features the same amount of happy hardcore songs with only refrains, she changed the direction for the third and fourth albums Jasmin and Die Welt gehört Dir, to a softer dance pop sound with refrain and verses. Wagner is known for numerous songs and singles being covers of other artists such as Paso Doble, Queen, Nena, Sesame Street, Ideal, Rozalla, Eddie Cantor, Ciro Dammicco, Turbonegro, Olivia Newton-John or Superpunk. She is also noted for singing multilingual, mostly German or English, but also in French, such as the French version of "Du bist die Insel", titled "Tu es mon île", a duet with the French singer Yta Farrow.

Because of her drastic music direction change aside her Blümchen sound, Wagner adopted other stage names, such as Blossom for the international Blümchen releases, Denim Girl for the indie rock song "Are you Ready for some Darkness" or her real names Jasmin Wagner or simply Jasmin for her recent works, like the 60s sound of Die Versuchung.

Wagner began her modelling career at age four in the Petrol catalog. In 1998, she was made the official representative of the Tommy Hilfiger product "Tommy Girl", and has also been involved in modelling several Hilfiger clothing products in Germany. She also promotes her own cosmetics line Jamila, which was launched in 2002.

As a spokesmodel she has also been a vocal supporter of animal rights groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and has been involved in many fundraising projects for them. As such in December 2004 she was involved in the charity fundraiser "Stars for Whales". However, her fundraising efforts are not just for animals; she has been a strong supporter of Hand in Hand for Children, a cancer awareness group. After the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake she was involved in a charity fundraiser for tsunami relief raising over € 50,000.

Ever since it has been speculated, that German studio singer Alexandra Prince, also from Hamburg, is the real singing voice of the first four Blümchen albums, alongside for many other bands, such as of the two albums of Sqeezer or Fernanda Brandão's voice in Hot Banditoz, which is most likely true, though yet never confirmed. The alleged proof has been more given when former Sqeezer members Yvonne Spath and Lori Stern, who both had the same voice sound in the groups' run, appeared with their real singing voices on future other musical projects such as Funky Diamonds and Mathilda, as well as Wagners own non-Blümchen related recent works under her real name, such as Die Versuchung, which also the Eurodance Encyclopaedia debated.[15] In Wagner's case, it's said, that Prince took over the singing vocals, high pitched, in the refrains, while Wagner took over the raps, spoken ad-libs and yelling parts in the verses.[16] This is a similar case to many other common music productions in the music industry like "Play", a single sold as a Jennifer Lopez-only song, with Christina Milian, who also co-wrote the song and recorded a demo version, singing solely the refrain, allegedly kept from the demo version, with Lopez singing the ad-libs and verses.[17] Another alleged hint has been given, in particular in the shout outs section of the debut singles' "Herz and Herz" liner notes, where Wagner is greeting some "Alex-p", which also is a common use in music industry to give a singer an indirect credit.[18] Though this greeting hasn't been giving on any other follow up Blümchen or Blossom releases.

In 2012, German singer Jan Delay claimed to Stefan Raab at TV Total, that Wagner didn't sing on many of her albums.[19][20] He didn't mentioned the name, but clearly supposed to mean Prince, with whom he is good friends. According to Tagesspiegel, neither Wagner nor Wagner's manager didn't express about the incident, when the newspapers requests an opinion. Though Prince herself has denied the rumors and corrected, that she only has been one of the choir singers. It's hard to find out if Jan Delay's claim is true, as he said there is a kind of a Code of honor in music industry to handle such things discreet.[21]

One of Wagners former producers, Stani Djukanovic, calls Delay's claim "utter nonsense". Although he said, that back in the day various other singers participated and had been added "in the choir", additionally Wagner's voice had been "pitched until you drop", manipulated on the computer. Nevertheless, the now 32-year-old can be heard on all her songs as the lead voice. But that is a clear contradiction to Jan Delay's claim. He had not explicitly said that Wagner was just one of many, but that she just did not sing at all. "Probably Jan Delay just wanted to tell a story to be funny", says Djukanovic. On demand, whether the singing on "Herz an Herz" now actually, and for the most part, belongs to Jasmin Wagner or not, Djukanovic answers "What should I say?", and then "Yes".[16]

Over the years, fans were using audio programs, pitching Wagner's and Prince's songs high and low, releasing several comparisation videos online.[22] One of the videos claims, that unlike the debut album "Herzfrequenz" and its counterpart "Heartbeat", which allegedly both have the same singer (Prince) on the albums' refrains, the second album's refrains on "Verliebt..." were mainly recorded by Prince, while its counterpart "In Love..." solely features Wagner's, at least not Prince's vocals, in particular in comparisation with the ballad "Gib mir noch Zeit" and "Give me more Time".[23][24] However, since the Blümchen return in 2019, Wagner uses mainly her own re-recorded, new updated vocals on her classic songs at live shows.[25][26]

• 2001: Driven - as Ingrid
• 2003: Operation Dance Sensation - as Schwester Stefanie
• 2007: Breathful - as Maxi
• 2007: Eis für Anfänger - as Anna

• 1998: Sesamstraße - Episode "1852", as Blümchen
• 2009: Hallo Robbie! - Episode "Schwarze Schafe", as Heike
• 2011: SOKO München - Episode "Unter die Haut", as Fabia Winter
• 2011: Notruf Hafenkante - Episode "Männer sind Schweine", as Anna Güttel
• 2017: Nord Nord Mord - Episode "Clüver und der König von Sylt", as Radio reporter
• 2018: Polizeiruf 110 - Episode "Crash", as Blümchen

• 2006: Tony Tough 2: A Rake's Progress - as Cornelia Cook