Lio

Vanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos born 17 June 1962 known professionally as Lio is a PortugueseBelgian singer and actress who was a pop icon in France and Belgium during the 1980s In 2024 she began serving as a judge on Drag Race Belgium Vanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos was born on 17 June 1962 in Mangualde Portugal When her father was called up to fight in the Portuguese Army the family moved to Mozambique Her parents divorced and in 1968 Vanda moved with her mother and new stepfather to Brussels Belgium where her sister actress Helena Noguerra was born In her teens she was determined to become a singer and she was encouraged by singersongwriter Jacques Duvall né Eric Verwilghem a family friend She took her stage name Lio from a character in the Barbarella comic books by JeanClaude Forest In 1979 together with songwriter Jay Alanski she and Duvall began working with Marc Moulin and Dan Lacksman from the electrotrio Telex Her first two singles were Le Banana Split which sold over 1 million copies and Amoureux solitaires a song originally by punk rock band Stinky Toys Both songs rose to the top of many pop charts in France and Moulin and Lacksman also produced her selftitled first album In 1982 the American music duo Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks worked with her on the album Suite sixtine on which some of her previous songs were translated into English Suite sixtine was compiled and art directed by Ralph Alfonso for Attic Records Canada where it was originally released Her second album Amour toujours was produced by Alain Chamfort and released in 1983 The same year she first appeared on the screen in Chantal Akermans film Golden Eighties a lighthearted humorous French pop musical about the people who work together in a Parisian shopping center Lio plays a carefree hairdresser in the movie In 1984 she was featured in a TV special with France Gall called Formule 1 where she sang Be My Baby with Gall In 1985 she met record company executive and producer Michel Esteban of ZE Records She continued to have hit singles in Europe including Les brunes comptent pas pour des prunes and travelled to Los Angeles with Esteban to record her next album Pop model Several of the tracks were coproduced by John Cale formerly of the Velvet Underground and the album produced the hits Fallait pas commencer Je casse tout ce que je touche and Chauffeur In 1988 after she had given birth to a daughter with Esteban she resumed her acting career starring in Claude Lelouchs film Itinéraire dun enfant gâté The LioEsteban partnership produced another album Can can recorded in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro She also designed a fashion collection for the European department store chain Prisunic Source Article Lio singer from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA