Jan. 9: International singer Lara Fabian, "I Will Love Again," is 41 today.

Lara Fabian - born Lara Crokaert in1970 - is a Belgian international singer who also holds Canadian citizenship. Multilingual, she sings, and is fluent in, French, Italian, Spanish, and English. She has also sung in Portuguese, and once in Hebrew on Israel's 60th Independence Day celebrations and in German in 1988 for a version of "Croire" although she speaks neither language fluently. She also speaks a little Dutch (Flemish).

Lara  is a soprano with a four octave vocal range. She has sold over 18 million records worldwide so far.
Born to a Belgian father and a Sicilian mother in Etterbeek, Belgium, she spent her first five years in her mother's hometown of Catania in Sicily, learning Italian as a first language, before moving back to Brussels, Belgium.

She began singing, dancing, and taking piano lessons at a very young age and began formal music lessons at age eight. She began writing and performing her own songs which were greatly influenced by both her classical vocal and music theory training and by contemporary artists such as Barbra Streisand and Queen.

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During the 1980s, Lara Fabian entered a number of European competitions and won several prizes. In 1986 she released her first single, "L'Aziza est en pleurs" / "Il y avait." Both were written by the Belgian composer Marc Lerchs as a homage to the deceased French singer Daniel Balavoine.

In 1988, the RTL TV channel in Luxembourg invited Fabian to represent the country at the 33rd Eurovision Song Contest, held that year in Dublin, Ireland. Fabian sang  composition  by Jacques Cardona and Alain Garciac entitled "Croire" (Trust) and reached a respectable fourth place that night.

The winning song that year was titled "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi" and launched the career of its performer,  Céline Dion, who sang on behalf of Switzerland. Fabian's "Croire" became a hit single that year in Europe selling nearly 500,000 copies.

In 1990, Fabian travelled to Canada to promote her third single "Je Sais" and fell in love with the province of Quebec. In 1991, with two suitcases and $1,000 in her pocket, Fabian and her friend and musical collaborator, Rick Allison, moved to Montreal, Canada to embark on a career in North America. They began their own music label and publishing company, Productions Clandestines.  The pair worked steadily on writing and recording songs.

In August 1991, Fabian's self-titled French-language debut album, Lara Fabian, was released in Canada and sold over 100,000 copies. This debut album went on to be certified Gold in 1993 and then certified platinum the following year.

The success of the album's upbeat Dance-pop singles such as "Le jour où tu partira," "Les murs," and "Qui pense à l'amour" gave Fabian the radio exposure she needed. She received several nominations at the 1993 ADISQ awards and a poll published around that time revealed that she was considered Quebec's most promising singer.

Fabian's constant touring in Quebec helped her 1994 album Carpe diem to become her breakthrough album. The album went Gold less than three weeks after its release, and spawned three hit singles: "Tu t'en vas," "Si tu m'aimes," and "Leïla." The following year, the album went Triple Platinum.

As a result of the album's success, Fabian received two Félix awards: Best Show Of The Year and Best Female Singer Of The Year (a category that is voted upon by the public).

After the success of Carpe diem, Fabian signed a contract with the French Polydor label for several albums and Pure was released in June 1997. Pure sold over two million copies in France alone and the album went platinum in less than two weeks.

The album spawned several hit singles: "Tout," "Je t'aime," "Humana" and the anti-homophobia anthem "La Différence." "Tout," "Je t'aime" and "Humana" each sold more than one million copies. Fabian won a Félix for Popular Album Of The Year at the 1997 ADISQ gala and was also nominated for two Juno Awards in the Best Female Singer and Best Selling French Album categories.

In the summer of 1999, Fabian recorded her first English-language album, Lara Fabian, in New York and San Francisco. The Dance-pop song, "I Will Love Again," her first English single, reached #1 on the U.S.A. Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play. It also peaked #32 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #10 Adult Contemporary) as well as appearing on several other international charts.

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Throughout the first half of 2010, Fabian embarked on an European tour of concerts specially throughout France, Switzerland and Belgium incorporating the main repertoire of her last album Tout Les Femmes En Moi.

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