Miss Papaya

Linnéa Handber, (born Linnéa Handberg 22 October 1976 in Hillerød, Denmark) also known as Papaya and, Miss Papaya is a Danish Eurodance musician. She then specialized in bubblegum dance music, in the same vein as Aqua, Bambee, Smile.dk, and Toy-Box. She today, in 2014, writes rock, pop and alternative music. She has achieved gold and platinum status as a songwriter within Europe and Asia in the 2000s after her 2 albums releases as an Independent artist.

Several of her songs, including "Operator", "Hero", and "Pink Dinosaur", have appeared in the wildly popular Dance Dance Revolution video games. Papaya has also contributed the songs "No Princess" and "Spaceman" to In The Groove 2.

Papaya was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she currently resides.

She began her music career in the early 1990s, signing with record labels Maverick, Warner, and Scandinavian Records. After Aqua's success in influencing other artists with their upbeat, dancy music, Papaya decided to try it for herself (after teaming up with producers Honeycutt), using the same happy style as Aqua. The resulting "Miss Papaya Project" was at first a bit of a joke, intended to be quite silly and childish, as Papaya later admits "nobody expected Miss Papaya to get the success she did". Papaya released her first single, "Jingle Bells" in 1997. It was a small hit, but nothing extremely encouraging. Producers decided to release another single, "Hero" originally written by Ms. Handberg and Honeycutt. To everyone's surprise, "Hero" was a smash hit, and Papaya was cemented as a bubblegum artist in the same style as Aqua.

Her first album, Pink, was released in 1998 at the peak of the bubblegum boom after the success of "Hero", and was worked on by Papaya and Honeycutt. Containing 11 sugar-coated tracks and one ballad (something all bubblegum albums seemed to require), the album was an instant success. Miss Papaya soon became a household name throughout Denmark. In 1998, "Hero" went across the pond to the U.S., something few bubblegum artists get to achieve. The single was quite a success, attracting many fans outside of Scandinavia. Even Madonna's daughter was a fan, Madonna inviting Papaya over to meet her child and praising Papaya on her songwriting skills. While in America, Papaya was given a shopping spree for her American music video of "Hero". She says it was one of the most fun things she had ever done, getting to pick out brightly colored outfits for the shoot. Her album was never actually released in the U.S., and her singles failed to chart due to bad promotion.

...
Wikipedia