Comprehensive information and links about Charlotte Church

Charlotte Church on February 21, 1986 at Llandaff, Cardiff, South GlamorganCharlotte Church is a Welsh soprano. She introduced her aunt on ITV's in 1998, was asked to sing and was heard by Jonathan Shalit, who then helped her to secure a record contract with Sony Classical at age 12. In recent years she has moved away from the classical field into pop music.

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Background

Church's looks and popular repertoire have made her a great commercial success. Her career began at the age of 12 with her breakthrough album, , where she showcased her unique soprano voice in a collection of arias, sacred songs, and traditional pieces that sold millions of copies worldwide and made her the youngest artist with a No. 1 selling album to date. She made a cameo appearance on the US CBS series . She later appeared on numerous PBS specials and television commercials, most notably in the acclaimed campaign for the Ford Motor Company. The song appeared on her self-titled second album, which included another array of operatic, religious, and traditional tracks. In 2000, Charlotte released , an album of Christmas carols. Charlotte has been represented in the press as an opera singer; but she has never sung in any performances of opera, only recordings (and those of excerpts, usually edited and engineered to fit her range). However, up until 2001, she had recorded only two pop (or classical crossover songs) -- "Just Wave Hello" and "Dream a Dream."

In 2001, Charlotte Church added some pop, swing, and Broadway to her classical repertoire with her album . That same year, movie-going audiences heard Church for the first time in the 2001 Ron Howard film (Dion was beginning her concert engagement in Las Vegas), composer James Horner enlisted Charlotte to handle the vocals, and the song was re-written to Church's vocal range. Charlotte also handled other vocal passages throughout the score.

In 2002, at the age of 16, Charlotte Church released a best-of album called , to mark her departure from classical music. The next year, she made her on-screen debut in the Craig Ferguson film

In the past couple of years, she has provoked some controversy with remarks on the September 11, 2001 attacks [1] and saying that agents are turning her down because of her weight. There was more controversy when she was awarded the Rear of the Year title in 2002 at the age of 16.

In March 2005, a topless photograph of Charlotte was rumoured to have been stolen from the mobile phone of her boyfriend Gavin Henson, a Welsh International Rugby player, when he lost his phone on a night out in Cardiff. In interviews, Church said she was in her bra, but not nude in the picture. She said that a topless picture of her circulating around the Internet was a fake.

Recently, her ex-boyfriend, Steven Johnson demanded Charlotte pay him £3m from her fortune to stop him from releasing his tell-tale book. His father promised the book would "hang the Church family" by revealing salacious details of Steven and Charlotte's sex life. Charlotte has yet to respond to this. Previously, her other ex had also sold stories of his relationship with Charlotte to the tabloids.

In 2005 she issued her first pop album and the first three singles have all been sucessful with "Crazy Chick", reaching 2 and "Call My Name" reaching 10 and "Even God Can't Change the Past" reaching 17.

Management

Jonathan Shalit was her initial manager discovering her when she was 11 years old. He took her to see Paul Burger of Sony Records who said, "She blew my socks off." Shalit received a commission of 20%. He successfully sued after being fired in January of 2000 (see[[2]]).

Her mother, Maria Church (of Italian or Maltese descent), acted as her manager until a new management team was hired in 2002 (see[[3]]). She denied firing her mother saying, "My mum was never my manager. She's still involved in my career but just at a lesser level because that's what my whole family decided" (see [[4]]).

"He's a really nice guy. I met him at the Labour Party conference and my mum had to bring all my outfits in a big suitcase. No else offered to carry it, part from Tony Blair who stopped and went: "Can I get that for you?" and my mum went, 'No thanks, Tone, you're alright'." (Source: Nuts magazine)"George Bush hasn't got a clue what he's doing. He asked me what state Wales was in. I said, 'It's its own country next to England, Mr. Bush.' I thought, "You twat." When I've met President Clinton and Tony Blair and other world leaders, as you do, they've all made me feel like they wanted to have a chat." "If he doesn't know the rest of the countries in Europe, he could at least know what's in his own country. I'm really worried about it. He's a right weirdo." (Sources: FemaleFirst and Ananova)