Always a singer inside
Updated on 06.08.2024, 06:00
Oksana (left) and Palina Kolenitchenko are still in good spirits … © RTL
There was great excitement among the “Goodbye Germany” emigrant family Kolenitchenko: A top music producer wanted to meet mom Oksana! The chance to make it big eleven years after her “DSDS” candidacy? VOX accompanied the excited singer from her adopted home of Las Vegas to Miami…
Oksana Kolenitchenko confessed to the VOX team in the current “Oksana’s World” episode of “Goodbye Germany” that she had always been a singer at heart. At just 13 years old, she had been signed by pop legend Ralph Siegel (78), had performed as the opening act for the boy band Natural in front of up to 50,000 people and had then repeatedly tried to bring her career to fruition.
Her biggest breakthrough so far: In 2013, she made it to the overseas recall on the Caribbean island of Curaçao in the RTL show “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” and was thus able to increase her fame even further.
But then another wish came knocking in her heart – and it became louder and louder: “No, I’d rather be a mommy.” She now has nine-year-old son Milan and eight-year-old daughter Arielle with her husband Daniel (41). Now that the two are older and no longer need their mom around the clock, the hope of a music career has found more space in her again.
So it was only convenient that her former manager “set her up” with one of the industry’s biggest names: Vincent Herbert (51) had already worked with Lady Gaga (38) and Destiny’s Child! And now maybe with Oksana too?
Enthusiasm or calculation?
The meeting in Miami, to which she accompanied her sister Palina (29), who works there as a DJ, seemed quite promising, at least at first glance: That same evening, the producer invited the two to his studio, where the emigrant played him a song on her cell phone that she had not quite finished producing a few years ago.
The American immediately started grooving along and seemed to like the blonde: “Wow, you definitely have it!” He would love to work with her, in Las Vegas or here in Miami. He even had a song in mind for her. When he played it to her, Oksana was also delighted: “I love it!” She would love to start recording immediately.
“Let’s talk on the phone,” Vincent promised. He wanted to speak to his sound engineers first. At the end of the conversation, the woman in her mid-thirties had tears in her eyes: had she really reached her goal, was the contract and the big career now beckoning?
A dream is shattered: Oksana learns about the production conditions over the phone. © RTL
Bitter disappointment
The next day, she was disappointed. Her ex-manager called and told her that Vincent Herbert would indeed produce her – but only if Oksana paid for the song and the production herself, which would “not be cheap”. She was not given an exact price.
She hadn’t imagined it would be like that and she didn’t know the business like that, she said, disappointed and quite confused. If a producer believes in a singer, he pays in advance and then deducts the production costs from the income: “In my world, he was so enthusiastic yesterday that he said he would like to work with me.”
Palina also finds the whole thing dubious: “He said yesterday that she was a superstar and so on. That’s why I’m a bit confused.” It quickly became clear: the singer would rather invest her money in her online shop Milari than in an uncertain music career.
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Happiness in the recording studio – just different
Back home in Las Vegas, despite the disappointment, she had found her smile again and was able to take something positive from her trip to Miami. At least Vincent Herbert’s praise sounded sincere and she now feels like putting energy and time into music again. In “those things that light my fire”.
Updated on 19.07.2024, 08:14
Chris Töpperwien became known as the “Currywurst man” in the emigration show “Goodbye Germany”. However, the US emigrant is currently on trial in Austria.
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