Dana International
Though born biologically male, Cohen identified as a female from a very young age. Cohen wanted to become a singer ever since she was eight-years-old and saw legendary Israeli singer Ofra Haza performing her song "Chai" in the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest. Although the family was quite poor, Cohen's mother worked to pay for Cohen's music lessons, and she has explained that her childhood was rather happy.
Cohen came out as transsexual at the age of thirteen. At eighteen-years-old, Cohen (still legally male) earned a living as Israel's first drag queen parodying many famous singers and women. During one of her performances, she was discovered by Offer Nissim, one of Israel's most famous DJs, who produced her debut single "Saida Suldana" ("My Name is Not Saida"), a satirical version of Whitney Houston's song "My Name Is Not Susan". The song received considerable airplay and launched her career as a professional singer.
In 1993, International flew to London for male-to-female sex reassignment surgery and was thus legally able to change her name to Sharon Cohen. Returning home with her new name, that same year Cohen released her first album entitled Danna International in Israel. Soon after, the album was also released in several other countries like Greece, Jordan, and Egypt. Sharon's stage name Dana International comes from the title track of the album, and was originally spelt with two n:s. Danna International soon became a gold record in Israel.
In 1994 Dana released her second album Umpatampa, which was even more successful and provided further hit singles. The album went platinum in Israel and has sold more than 50,000 copies to date. Because of her popularity and the success of this album, she won the award for Best Female Artist of the year in Israel.
In 1995, Dana attempted to fulfill her childhood dream of performing in the Eurovision Song Contest. She entered the Eurovision qualifying contest K'dam in Israel with a song entitled "Layla Tov, Eropa" ("Good Night Europe") which finished second in the pre-selections but became another hit single.
In late 1995, Dana released an E.P. called E.P. Tampa with three new songs and four remixes and special versions of her earlier songs.
Dana was chosen to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest with her song "Diva". Orthodox Jews and others with conservative views were opposed to her appointment and attempted to void her participation in the contest. However, in May 1998, Dana performed "Diva" at the Eurovision Song Contest in Birmingham and took Europe by storm, winning the contest with 174 points. It is well known that they wanted to take out her prize because of her transexuality, but she organized an International strike that could bring it back. When she acted again in the show, she wore a Heather jacket made by Jean Paul Gaultier. She thus became an international superstar, being interviewed by CNN, BBC, Sky News and MTV among others.
She released her next album Free in Europe in 1999, which enjoyed moderate success. A few months later Cohen moved back to Israel and started to work on different projects. Israeli and Japanese editions of Free were released in 2000. That same year, an Israeli documentary film was made about Cohen called Lady D.
After that she published a record on Europe with her best songs in Israel with the title “The Album” and another with new songs titled “ Free”. She would edit other two albums before “The CDs collection”. In 2005, Diva was elected the thirteenth best song in Eurovision History, for what she competed in the Congratulations show.
