SANDRA KIM

Singer from Montegnée who will be remembered mostly for her victory in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1986.

Born in October 1972 as Sandra Caldarone, her singing talents were discovered when she was only 11 (and she had been singing for a few years already) in a contest in Tilleur. As a singer for the group Musiclub she then took part in the contest "L'ambrogino d'oro" in Milan in 1985 with the song "Ami Ami". Half a year later she was even selected to be the Belgian participant for the Eurovision Song Contest that was held in Bergen (Norway) in 1986.

If it was because of her fresh appearance, the reach of her voice, the Italian "drive", the optimistic lyrics (Ik hou van het leven) or the arrangements (reminds me of hit-factories such as Modern Talking and the like...) ... who knows. Fact is that no jury left the thirteen year old girl without points, thus giving Belgium the first (and to this day only) victory in the 40-year history of the Eurovision Songfestival.
With this, Sandra Kim immediately earned thousands of fans (see the links or the song of Bange Konijnen "Shit, Ik ben verliefd op Sandra Kim" - Shit, I'm in love with ...). The year after in Brussels (after a number of quarrels between the different television stations and language groups in Belgium), she presented the prize in Brussels together with Viktor Lazlo to Johnny Logan.

In the years that followed, Sandra Kim finished high-school (she switched to "artistic" education), but also continued to work on her career. Her second best-selling single became "Tokyo Boy", a song with which she also got a prize at the festival in Japan.

In the nineties, she became a television presenter for "Dix qu'on aime" (Ten - songs - we love), a program on RTL with a hitparade of french songs. She also managed to pop up in the Flemish counterpart of this hitparade in duets with Flemish singers such as Luc Steeno ("Bel me, schrijf me") and Frank Galan ("Onvergetelijk").

For a long time, things got very quiet around the singer in the middle of the nineties. She married and then divorced youth pal Olivier Gérard and also her cooperation with her discoverer and producer since the beginning Marino-Atria came to an end.

In 1998 she took back her place in the spotlights with a song sung in Dutch in which she tries to present an image of herself as a chanteuse in the genre of Barbra Streisand and Céline Dion. Of this last one she recorded "My heart will go on" as "Heel diep in mijn hart op", again a hit in Flanders. As she said herself "These ladies give me cold shivers. If you can make people feel emotions with nothing but your voice, then you're a good interpreter. Streisand knows how to do that better than anyone. Believe it or not, my ultimate dream is still the same as it was ten years ago : to sing a duet with her !".

In 1999 she took on a musical-career (as Eponyme in the Belgian staging of the ever popular "Les Misérables", later in a musicalcompilation called "Musicals from the heart"), and did she sing a duet with Helmut Lotti and Paul Michiels "Song for Kosovo" (raising funds for the refugees in the Balkan).

In 2001 Sandra Calderone made sort of a come-back with the italian-sung "Vivere uguale" and "J'ai pas fini de t'aimer" - a french version of "I just can't stop loving you" of Michael Jackson & Siedah Garrett. Also in this year, she will marry again, with the West-Vlaming Jurgen Delanghe.

Buy CD's of this artist at

Albums :
- J'aime la vie (1986)
- Bien dans ma peau (1987)
- Balance Tout (1991)
- Met open ogen (1991)
- Sixties (1993)
- Onvergetelijk (met Frank Galan) (1997)
- Heel diep in mijn hart (1998)
Compilations :
- I piu grandi successi di (1988)
- Best of Sandra Kim (1994)
- Het Beste van Sandra Kim (Master Series, 1997)

Websites :
- Sandra Kim.com, the official site
- Sandra Kim page by Chris Vandenabeele
- Sandra-mania
- Another Sandra Kim-fanpage, by German Bernt.
- Sandra Kim site with a nice press-overview