June 9: Austrian singer Christina Stürmer of the rock band, Christina Stürmer is 29 years-old today.

Christina comes from a very musical family. At the age of thirteen she played the saxophone in a jazz band. She also played the transverse flute. In 1998 she sang in a cover band she founded, named "Scotty," with most songs in English. Stürmer sang on Scotty's self released EP Waste Of Time, released in 2000.

She was also a member of an a cappella group named Sulumelina. After dropping out of high school, Christina began an apprenticeship with the bookstore, Amadeus. In 2003, she applied to Starmania, an Austrian music casting TV show. She finsihed second in Starmania behind Michael Tschuggnall. Shortly after that she released her first original song, "Ich Lebe" (I Live) which reached the number one spot on the Austrian music charts and stayed there for nine weeks.

Two more highly successful singles followed "Ich Lebe": "Geh nicht wenn du kommst" (Don't Go When You Come), and the anti-war song Mama (Ana Ahabak) (Arabic for Mama, I Love You) which tells the story of a little Iraqi girl's perspective of the war. It spent nine weeks at the number one spot on the Austrian charts.

Her first album, Freier Fall (Free Fall), was released exclusively in Austria in May 2003, and it also rose quickly to the top of the charts, where it occupied the number one spot for weeks.

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In May 2004 her second album, Soll das wirklich alles sein (Is that really everything?) appeared, again only in Austria. The album was even more successful than Freier Fall, (Free Fall) but the album's singles did only average in sales.

The Wirklich alles! (Really Everything!) tour in Austria followed in the fall. The highlight of this tour was the concert at Vienna city hall in November, which sold all 11,000 tickets. The concert was filmed, and along with some interviews and a short biography, was released in DVD form as Wirklich alles!

During the club tour that began directly after the Vienna concert, she presented, for the first time, her own original compositions, which she had written with her band.

The album which followed, Schwarz Weiss (Black White) was released in June 2005, in Germany and Switzerland, reached number three on the German album charts, and stayed in the top twenty for more than a year. The majority of the songs on this album, which were mostly already known in Austria, were oriented towards the German rock and pop music market. The singles were "Engel fliegen Einsam" (Angels Fly Lonely) "Mama (Ana Ahabak)," and "Immer an euch geglaubt" (Always Believed In You). The singles were also re-recorded to be more rock oriented.

In 2006, Christina and her band released their fourth album, Lebe lauter (Live Louder). The album reached number one in both Germany and Austria. And the singles, Nie genug (Never Enough), and Um bei dir zu sein/An Sommertagen (To Be By Your Side/On Summer Days) both reached number one as well on the Austrian charts.

The first single, Nie genug reached a respectable number fifteen in Germany. The following singles after Um bei dir zu sein/An Sommertagen, Ohne Dich (Without You) and Scherbenmeer both reached the top ten in Austria. That year, she sold more than 1.5 million copies of her CDs in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

That year, she also won the ECHO award for "Best National Female Artist (Rock/Pop)," and the Amadeus Austrian Music Award 2006 for "Best Pop/Rock national" and "Best Single national."

When Austria co-hosted Euro 2008 with Switzerland, Christina's song Fieber was the Austrian song for Euro 2008, followed by her last album In dieser Stadt in 2009, which brought us two more singles, "Ist mir egal" and "Mehr als perfekt."