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BIOGRAPHY

Marion Raven
	BIOGRAPHY | GALLERY | GOSSIP | BLOG

Marion Raven, born on May 25, 1984 in Lorenskog, Norway, is a Norwegian singer and songwriter.

Raven was one-half of the duo M2M, along with Marit Larsen. When M2M disbanded in September 2002, Raven was offered a million dollar recording contract with Atlantic Records, and released her Asia debut album Here I Am in 2005.

Upon signing her deal with Atlantic Records, Marion Raven set about recording her debut album, and worked with Swedish songwriters Max Martin and Rami, as well as Canadian singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk and her husband Raine Maida. The resulting 14-track list cultivates a more manufactured rock/pop sound, similar to artists such as Avril Lavigne and Evanescence and was titled Here I Am. The album was preceded by the Max Martin and Dr. Luke collaboration tracks that had leaked out earlier and attracted interest from fans. However, the album was shelfed by Atlantic, who had dumped M2M. The record company neglected promotional duties for the "Here I Am" album.

Raven's collaboration with Max Martin, "Break You", was released to radio on April 2005 (in Japan). Following that, the album was released in June in the same year. Videos for "Break You" and the album's title track, "Here I Am', were shot in March 2005 in Los Angeles, by director Brett Simon.

The album Here I Am was released in Raven's home country of Norway on August 10, 2005 debuting at #6, alongside Sweden. The album was well received in Asia. It spent many weeks at #1 on Japan charts with Raven touring various venues throughout June and July 2005 in countries including the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan. The music videos for "End of Me" and "Break You" received massive rotation on MTV Asia and the songs went top 10 on many radio charts throughout Asia and Norway. However, the lack of promotion in certain countries sparked controversy and suspicion that Atlantic was unhappy with the album. At that time less challenging rap acts were favoured as they were more commercially viable.

In early 2006, it was announced that Raven had been released from her contract with Atlantic Records due to "artistic differences." Soon after this, she announced she was to record and release her US debut album under indie label, Eleven Seven Music created by her management company 10th street ent, home to Everclear and Nikki Sixx, who both sang and collaborated on Here I Am respectively. In July 2006, Raven announced on her official MySpace page that a re-recorded version of "Heads Will Roll", co-written by James Michael and Nikki Sixx will be her debut single in the US. It was made available as part of an EP on October 31, 2006. The EP contained new songs, "Spit You Out," "Good 4 Sex" and "All I Wanna Do Is You", with Raven citing that the songs slanted towards fun-rock. "13 Days," her collaboration with Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk, an acoustic version of "Let Me Introduce Myself" and the re-recorded version of "Heads Will Roll" were also on the EP. "Heads Will Roll" was featured on the "Van Wilder 2: Rise of the Taj" movie soundtrack. The video for the single caused controversy, depicting Raven lying half-naked amongst naked women, and featured exposed breasts. A censored version of the video, without nudity was made available for daytime airplay on music video channels.

In mid-2006, whilst Raven was working with Desmond Child on new songs for her new album Set Me Free, Raven recorded a track, entitled "October," for the upcoming Hollywood film, "Cut Off" (originally titled "Taking Charge"), that was meant for release in late 2006.

Whilst working with Desmond Child, Raven met Meat Loaf, who was also working with Child on his new album, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose. Child suggested Raven join Meat Loaf on a duet of the song, "It's All Coming Back To Me Now", originally written by Jim Steinman for the album, but then given to and released by Celine Dion. The result was picked as the first single from Meat Loaf's album, and the video, featuring Raven, premiered on VH1 Classic in the US on August 12, 2006. The single was commercially released in the UK on 16 October 2006, having been playlisted by BBC Radio 2. The track debuted at #43 based on downloads alone, to make a rather impressive jump to #6 during its second week, becoming Raven's first UK Top 10 single, and second charting single in Britain. She had a Top 20 entry as part of M2M when "Don't Say You Love Me" debuted and peaked at #16 in 2000. "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" spent a total of 70 weeks on the charts.

The full-length album,"Set Me Free", which will feature a mixture of album tracks from the previous Here I Am as well as new songs, will be released in middle 2007.