Lio

Natasha of Radio Oh-la-la-fame has written a nice story about "Belgian baby doll" Lio:

"In the 1960s when French teenybopper France Gall sang Les Sucettes supposedly about lollypops at age 19, she admitted being too naive to understand the true meaning of what she was singing. In the 1980s when Belgian baby doll Lio sang and danced around to Banana Split at age 17, she knew perfectly well what that ‘sudden avalanche of whipped cream’ was all about.

Although she has had more success as an actress, fashion designer and posing naked on all fours, Lio has always insisted on a singing career and managed to bring out quite few albums. Such a feat would not have been possible without the help of many a man, including maestro Marc Moulin of Telex fame who produced Banana Split and French singer Alain Chamfort, who helped her with an album entitled L’Amour Toujours, which, well, flopped. The fact that Lio’s long singing career is the result of sheer perseverance rather than talent is in itself quite remarkable.

Another one of her hits was Amoureux Solitaires, which sounds terribly happy if you don’t understand French. Luckily for the Anglo-Saxon world, Banana Split was adapted into English and renamed Marie Antoinette. Even the Belgian government deemed it appropriate to mention Lio alongside other, more famous Belgian singers such as Maurane and Axelle Red, although Lio gets the honourable mention of – and I quote – 'an impudent Portuguese immigrant'."

Lio - Amoureux Solitaires
Hear Here

Lio - Marie-Antoinette
Hear Here

Lio - Suite Sixteen
Hear Here