Career
After doing backing vocals for years, Gretchen appeared on a TV show in 1978 and soon recorded her debut single, "Dance With Me". In 1980, 1981 and 1982, she released her three most successful albums: My Name Is Gretchen, You and Me, and Lonely. These three albums featured songs that became hallmarks in her career, such as "Freak Le Boom Boom", "Melô do Piripipi", "Conga Conga Conga". She sold more than 15 million albums worldwide. Between 1980 and 1982, she grabbed the media's attention by making "sexy" music, while still enjoying popularity among children. After Lonely in 1982, she went on a downward spiral while trying to remain on the charts. Born as a Roman Catholic, Gretchen embraced the Protestant faith in the 1990s, and began singing Gospel music.
By the end of the 1990s, her hits had returned to dance floors. With the emergence of Butt Music stars like Carla Perez, Gretchen was eventually recognized as a forerunner of the hip shakers. The compilation 20 Super Sucessos came out in 1998 on Copacabana/EMI.
Gretchen signed a contract to star in a porn movie for Brazilian porn producers Brasileirinhas in 2006, following the example of Rita Cadillac, with whom she appeared in the 1982 pornochanchada Aluga-se Moças. The movie, La Conga Sex, was released by November, followed by another porn title, Carnaval 2007, released in February 2007.
In 2008, she became candidate of Socialist People's Party to be mayor of the city of Itamaracá.
Read more about this topic: Gretchen (entertainer)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)