Rouge | |
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Background information | |
Origin | São Paulo, SP |
Genres | |
Years active | 2002 | —2005 ; 2013
Labels | |
Associated acts | |
Past members | Aline Wirley Fantine Thó Karin Hils Li Martins Luciana Andrade |
Rouge were a commercially successful girl group, formed in the first season of the Brazilian reality show Popstars, broadcast by SBT in 2002. In four years of career, they achieved four Gold, three Platinum and one Diamond album in Brazil and released various hit singles, becoming the most successful Brazilian girl group of all time. As of August 2010, the Rouge have sold approximately 6 million records.
The goal of the first season (2002) of the Brazilian version of the show Popstars was to form a girl group. Thousands of young women participated the first phase of the show in São Paulo and, through tests, five girls were selected by three judges: Rick Bonadio, music producer, Alexandre Schiavo, Sony Music Brazil Vice-President of Marketing and Iara Negrete, vocal coach to form Rouge. While Popstars had a good rating for SBT, nobody expected Rouge's album (released by Sony Music) to be as big as it ended up being.
In 2002, they released their debut self-titled album, which was tremendously successful and sold over 1,2 million copies in Brazil, receiving the Diamond certification. Part of the unexpected success was due to the song "Ragatanga" (the Portuguese version of Las Ketchup's global hit The Ketchup Song (Asereje)), which became a huge phenomenon in the country when released. Rouge was particularly popular among young girls and shoe-line, dolls, candies, toys, among other licensed products were released targeting the public.
Their second album came in 2003, named C'est La Vie. The lead single, "Brilha La Luna", performed well on Brazilian charts, but was not as huge as Ragatanga. The album went Platinum (350.000 copies sold). In February 2004 Luciana left the group before the release of the third album due to personal reasons. She would not reveal what prompted her to leave the group, but many newspapers says the reason was the fights with Fantine. Fantine attacked constantly Luciana in media and claimed that she did not sing good parts in the songs because most solo parts sung by Luciana and Karin. But the Fantine's disgust by Luciana began hearings on Popstars. In 2002 on the Sônia Abrão's program Falando Francamente (en: Speaking Frankly), Fantine said she did not like Luciana and she was the only one she did not want the group, but said they had become friends. Luciana was forbidden to record a solo album for seven years for breaking the contract. The ban was completed in 2010.