Childhood
Newton found her own voice as a child growing up in the town of Burshtyn, in the western part of Ukraine. At age five, she taught herself to sing by imitating famous Ukrainian and Russian vocalists, and begged her mother to invite her friends over so she could perform for them. "I didn't know if I wanted to be a singer, but I knew I loved performing," she says. At age nine, Newton began to enter regional vocal competitions to gain experience onstage. Then, when she was 11, a video of Michael Jackson performing his international hit "Earth Song" caught her attention. " I didn’t know who he was but I heard “Earth Song” and I decided: “oh my god, I want to do what he’s doing for the planet! I want to be where he is right now!” I’m in America This childhood dream came true."
While attending a performing arts school as a teenager (where she studied voice, piano, acting, dance, and pantomime), she continued to compete in local and international talent contests, taking first place at nearly all of them, which led to attention from music industry players, at the age of 16 she got signed with the record label Falyosa Family Factory.
Her first name, Mika, is a derivative from Mick Jagger's first name and Newton stands for a new tone.
Read more about this topic: Mika Newton
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)