Edsilia Rombley

Edsilia Rombley was born on february 13th 1978 in Amsterdam. At Aged 23 she already had built up a very impressive carreer as a singer. It wasn't a dream of hers to become a professional singer. It started as a joke. It all started in 1995 when Edsila was asked by Gracia Gorre (niece of footballplayer Dean Gorre) to sing a song together with Karima Lemghari, Susan Haps and Gracia herself. That show was so succesfull that they decided to start as a new band. They called themselves DIGNITY: Dignified Individuals Giving New Insight To You.

Dignity took part in auditions in 1996 for the No Sweat-project and they got through. They recorded two songs. The debut single was called "Talk to me". The other song was called "Hold me". Both songs were released on the No Sweat album. Dignity is one of the most shiny acts on that album and different record companies offered them a record deal.

In that same year Edsilia's family put her forward for the soundmix show. She sang the song "I just had to hear your voice" by Oleta Adams. She won the show and got through to the finals. There she also won very easily.

The single "Talk to me" entered the dutch charts in 1997. It also became a hit in Germany. Also in 1997 Edsilia won the European SoundMix Show and decided to leave DIGNITY. She signed a deal with record company "Dino Music". Her first solo single was released called "Baby, it's you". Producers/songwriters Jochem Fluitsma & Eric van Tijn were so impressed by Edsilia that they decided to do a dutch record with her. The album was called "Thuis". 200,000 copies of the album were sold. At the end of 1997 Fluitsma & Van Tijn got the order to write a song for the National Songcontest 1998. (They wrote in 1993 Ruth Jacott's Vrede which ended 6th place at Eurovision 2003). They were allowed to choose any artist to sing sing it and without any doubt at all Edsilia was the one for the job.

On March 8th 1998 Edsilia sang the song "Hemel en aarde" at the National Finals Contest. She wins very easily with it. Therefore she took part at the Eurovision Song Contest on May 9th in Birmingham, UK. She Scored 151 points and ended up taking 4th place and with that the best dutch result since 1975. Immediatley after the contest she took a break with her voice. After her recovery she recorded her first english cd called "Edsilia". In october that year the first single was released "Second floor". THe album was released on November 13th of that year.

In 1999 another single from the "Edsilia" album was released, a cover of Oleta Adams hit "Get here". The single didn't score well, although it had a beautiful video. In that summer Edsilia recorded new songs that were to be released on the album "Secrets of my soul". The first single "How can you say that" was released on November 12 1999. The songs were written and produced by Steve Kipner, David Frank and Jack Kugell who also wrote "Genie in a bottle" for Christina Aguilera. The result is a very adult sound.

Additions from the news section

In March 2002 Edsilia was nominated for best R&B national artist.In the same year, June 16th, Edsilia's new single was released called "Gotta Let You Go". Her new album "Face To Face" was released on July 29th and contained a duet with Trijntje Oosterhuis, the sister of her boyfriend.

Translated by Gerard Moeken