1. Dan Balan was born on 6 February 1979 and is a Moldovan musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer.
34 Facts About Dan Balan
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Dan Balan is the founder of Moldovan Eurodance band O-Zone, and wrote their international hit single "Dragostea Din Tei", which topped the charts in 32 countries and sold 12 million copies worldwide.
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Dan Balan was born on 6 February 1979 in Chisinau, to Mihai Balan, a diplomat, and Ludmila Balan, a TV presenter.
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Dan Balan was given his first instrument, a second-hand accordion, as a present at age 11 and began pursuing music.
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Dan Balan spent the next two years performing with the band, taking several small gigs, and then decided to move to commercial-sounding music.
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Dan Balan started experimenting and exploring a new, commercial pop sound, and recorded and released his first solo song, "De la Mine", in 1998.
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In 1998, Dan Balan formed O-Zone, a new musical project, with Petru Jelihovschi, former vocalist in Inferialis.
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Dan Balan auditioned several individuals but was unable to find somebody who fit his concept for the music.
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The single, written and produced by Dan Balan, reached the number one position on the charts of more than thirty countries and was the third bestselling single in the UKthat year.
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Dan Balan moved to Los Angeles in early 2006 to record at Ocean Way.
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Dan Balan returned from the US in early 2007 and began working on a new experimental musical project.
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Dan Balan performed the songs, which were a deviation from his prior material, in a falsetto voice.
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Dan Balan re-recorded the single in Greece as a duet with Greek pop star Eleni Foureira.
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The song continued its global dominance and Dan Balan was invited as a special guest to the Russian music industry's annual awards ceremony, the Muz-TV Awards, on 11 June 2010, where he performed the single.
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Dan Balan won a Golden Gramophone Award, Russia's most prestigious music prize, for his single "Lepestkami Slez" at the 16th Golden Gramophone awards ceremony in the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow.
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Dan Balan released a new English single, "Freedom", which featured American singer Corey Gibson and DJ Andrea Bertolini, in the spring of 2011.
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Dan Balan started recording the video for "Freedom", which was directed by Pavel Hudeakov in May 2011 in southern France.
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Dan Balan released his second Russian single, "Lish do Utra," on 26 September 2011.
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The song was recorded in studios in several countries, including Romania, the UK, Russia and the US In an interview, Dan Balan explained that upon thinking the concept of the song, he had an immediate notion that the song would be best presented in the Russian language.
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Dan Balan wrote the concept for the song's music video himself and enlisted French director Steven Ada to direct the video.
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The video was filmed in Corsica Island, with Dan Balan starring opposite Ioana Raicu.
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Dan Balan was nominated for Best Singer and Best Song for "Lish do Utra".
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Dan Balan was awarded the Krasnaya Zvezda award in nomination Best Songs of the Year for his single, which was one of the top twenty most popular songs of 2012 in Russia.
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In May 2013, Dan Balan released "Lendo Calendo", a bilingual single with lyrics in Spanish and English.
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Dan Balan sang his part in Spanish, which he had studied in Barcelona.
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On 30 November 2013, Dan Balan received his third Golden Gramophone award for the song "Lyubi".
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In January 2014, Dan Balan began recording a new studio album, Freedom, Part 2 in London in the Abbey Road Studios, AIR Studios, RAK Studios, Strongroom Studios and Sarm Studios.
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Dan Balan wrote the music and lyrics and produced all of the tracks on the album.
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In 2017, Dan Balan decided to return from his three-year creative break, in which he had been working on experimental music styles, to return with a more commercial sounding single which would not be featured on Freedom, Part 2.
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Dan Balan decided to re unite O-Zone in 2017 to have 2 concerts on 9 May 2017 in Chisinau and Bucharest.
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In March 2018, Dan Balan released a new single called "Allegro Ventigo", featuring Matteo.
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Dan Balan joked in an interview that this is "Old Moldavian", but the settled view is that the lyrics are written in a fictional language that combines elements of Spanish, Italian, Greek and Romanian.
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On 12 September 2018, Dan Balan released a new single called "Numa Numa 2" in association with Marley Waters.
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In 2019, Dan Balan created an audio and video production company Monarda Studios, that deals with managing and developing music artists and internet celebrities.