The History
Full Name: Filippina Lydia Arena.
Pina for short but changed to Tina when Tina began in YTT (Young
Talent Time)
Born: 1st November 1967, Tina
is a Scorpio. Tina is of Italian background.
Family: Tina is the middle of
three daughters. Nancy, the older and Silvana, the younger. She grew up in the Melbourne suburb of
Moonee Ponds.
Marriage: Tina is separated from
her husband, Ralph Carr. They married in 1995 and Ralph was Tina's
manager throughout the mid to late 90's. He does not manage her
now.
Early Beginnings: Tina started
on Young Talent Time, an Australian Talent Show which began in
1971 and was on Australian TV screens every Saturday night. Tina
was only 7 when she started. Kids had to leave the show when
they were 16, so too then Tina, who left YTT at the tender age
of 16, just when she was expanding her vocal prowess. Tina found
it hard to shake the YTT image as many other ex-Talent Timers
found. They therefore have not seen the success that Tina has.
Some have, but to limited capacity. Danni Minogue is an example.
Tina had trouble crossing from
child star to respected adult performer and had to get work where
it was offered. She was the voice behind many advertising jingles
(Movieland, Haymes Paints, Ollies Trolley to name a few) and
also worked for short time with a Melbourne Insurance Company.
Tina however was not cut out for this routine and returned to
her real love of singing.
Her first single in 1985, Turn
Up The Beat, was not a success. And so the struggle continued.
She scored a gig at Melbourne's Grainstore Tavern, playing with
resident band Network. This got her a lot of fans as she was
doing covers and the night was always packed out. Not long after
this, Tina scored the role of the Narrator in the new Australian
production of "Joseph and His Amazing Technoclor Dreamcoat".
And then, the recordings followed.
Her first album, Strong As Steel
(1990), recorded for EMI Australia,was a moderate success scoring
Gold record status in Australia (35,000 copies). This album contained
the hit single I Need Your Body which became the highest selling
Australian artist single for 1990. It was kept from the top spot
by All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You by "Heart" and
It Must Have Been Love by "Roxette". There were further
singles released from this album, with The Machine's Breaking
Down which making it into the Top 40 in Australia.
The original Strong as Steel
album was re-released by Sony after the success of Don't Ask
but contained different tracks. The singles from the first version
remained intact however (see discography).
Her big break came with being
signed to Sony Music Australia. Sony had faith that Tina could
be successful. And that faith has seen her go on to become the
Highest Selling Female Australian Artist EVER! Sony had made
Tina one of their priority artists but still have failed to give
her the push she needs to break her worldwide. Tina has yet to
break big in the European and US markets.
The first CD for SONY was Don't
Ask in 1994. This marks an incredible era in Tina's career as
it was an astonishing success in Australia, getting to number
one twice, spawned many successful singles such as Chains, Sorrento
Moon and Heaven Help My Heart. It has sold in excess of 2 million
copies world wide of which more than 700,000 sales were in Australia
alone.
Then came the incredible, In
Deep, Tina's current CD. It was released in Australia in August
1997 and has been very successful here. Not as big as her previous
CD Don't Ask, but still very successful. There were delays in
launching this cd to the rest of the world, namely the UK and
US markets and the result so far has not seen much success. If
I Was A River, featured on the International version of the In
Deep CD, was written specially for Tina by Dianne Warren, writer
of many huge hit songs. It failed to ignite the charts with was
a surprise to all and it was not released at all in Australia.
Some other markets, Japan, Singapore, Argentina had this single
release.
The movie soundtrack to "The
Mask Of Zorro" featured a duet with Tina and Marc Anthony
with the song "I Want To Spend My Lifetime Loving You"
and it was a big hit in some European countries. But is is France
who took Tina to their hearts. Tina recorded two tracks in French
for her local France In Deep release and one of them "Aller
Plus Haut" has been Tina's biggest single in France to date.
This was released in 1999.
Now Tina is embarking on a WestEnd
(London) musical career, with the starring role of Esmeralda,
in the new musical "Notre Dame de Paris." This role
starts in June 2000, with a single release of the song "Live"
released prior to this in the UK.
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"The
Flame" - La canzone di Sidney 2000 
