Talk:Mehrzad Marashi

Unsourced and poorly sourced, moved from BLP to talk page

 * Early life

Mehrzad Marashi was born on September 20, 1980 in Iran. At the age of six he came to Hamburg, Germany with his family, because of the war in Iran. He wrote his first song at age 12. The song was first conceived as a poem, but Mehrzad said: "I brought my own melody in the song, and I realized quickly that it does not sound so bad." He joined a gospel choir. Years later, with his two friends, Marashi formed the band Mehrzad "Realize", which sung hits by Boyz to Men. The band broke up after a few years and Mehrzad continued by himself. He also attended a music academy, where he studied piano, but left for financial reasons.

Later, under the name "Marasco", he first recorded some songs. His music style at the time was German RnB. Uploading his songs on YouTube brought some success, with his song "Es tut mir leid" ("I'm sorry") viewed 1.5 million times, and his other two songs "Shila" and "I cant take," gaining around half a million views. Despite this, chart success still eluded him, and his song "She's gone" failed to reach the Top 100, after which Mehrzad lost his record deal.

In 2009, Mehrzad applied to German Idol accompanied by his friends. He quickly became the top favorite. Nina Eichinger praised him for "maximum goose bumps" and Dieter Bohlen called his voice "divine". In the top 15 show, his interpretation of "Und wenn ein Lied" (by Xavier Naidoo) got the most calls. After the show Naidoo called him and congratulated him personally. On 10 April, in the semifinals, he asked his girlfriend to marry him in the middle of the show. In the final he won against Menowin Frohlich, with 56% of the vote.
 * Deutschland sucht den Superstar


 * Career after DSDS

Mehrzad Marashi won the seventh "Germany sucht den Superstar" season after a closely fought race. His winning single "Dont Believe" achieved several records. For the first time in German Idol history, the song was available directly after the program as a download, and it sold more copies within the first 24 hours than any song had done previously. The Maxi-CD was an instant top seller: after only five days ago the song, written and produced by Dieter Bohlen, sold more than 100,000 copies in Germany alone, and was unchallenged at the top of the singles charts in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxemburg for the first week. A boycott campaign was launched to try to prevent Mehrzad reaching number one on the Charts with downloads of the 14-year old song "Boomerang", but without success.

"Don't Believe" was certified Gold in Austria, Switzerland and Germany after only three weeks. In Germany alone, Marashi sold more than 250,000 copies of his first single.

The music video for "Don't Believe" was filmed in April 2010 in New York. The world premiere of the video was on BILD.de and at the official website of RTL. In the video, Marashi performed at different locations in New York, with the Statue of Liberty, the Skyline and the Rodeo Drive visible in different scenes. The "Don't Believe" music video was the most viewed video on Mtv.de and Viva.tv for many weeks.

Immediately after his triumph on 17 April Mehrzad was inundated with invitations to shows and TV shows in Iran. "I am glad that I can show the people of Germany a different picture of Iran than anyone else gets," he explained, "it is important that my country does not automatically equate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Marashi appeared on TV shows including "Wetten dass", "The Dome", "Let's Dance" and "Comet", with as many as eight million viewers.

While Marashi worked on his debut album with his mentor Dieter Bohlen, his second song, "Sweat", a cover of the 1992 hits of the band Inner Circle, was released on May 23, 2010. Marashi recorded the song with Mark Medlock, who had won the fifth season of German Idol. The song became a summer hit, reaching the top 3 the download charts and number 2 in the singles charts, behind the World Cup song "Waving Flag" by Knaan.

Marashi also manged to get two songs in the German Top 10 simultaneously with "Sweat" reaching number 2, and "Dont Believe" at number 9.

He received his first Gold award at the beginning of June during his visit to Vienna.

On June 5, 2010 Mehrzad gave a concert in his hometown, Hamburg, in front of 100,000 people. At the same time, Sony BMG announced his first concert tour.

On July 7, 2010 Mehrzad married his girlfriend, after a relationship lasting four years.

On August 19, 2010 Mehrzad's planned tour was canceled, because ticket sales were rather disappointing. Reasons for that were apparently too high ticket prices (30 Euros) and too big concert halls. Shortly after that, his then producer Dieter Bohlen and Mehrzad split ways, and effectively are no longer working together.

Unsourced and poorly sourced, moved from BLP to talk page. Per WP:BURDEN, do not add back unless properly sourced. -- Cirt (talk) 17:08, 14 November 2010 (UTC)