Despina Malea, known as Despina Vandi, is a Greek singer. Born in Tübingen near Stuttgart, Germany, Vandi's family returned to Kavala, Greece when she was six years old.
After moving to Athens in the early 1990s, Vandi signed with Minos EMI and released two albums Gela Mou and Esena Perimeno. She then began an exclusive collaboration with songwriter/producer Phoebus and achieved commercial success with her third album, Deka Endoles, followed by the multi-platinum Profities, as she established a more "pop" stage performance style and image, becoming one of the most prominent artists of the laïko/pop genre.
Her single "Ipofero" became the best-selling single of all-time in Greece. Following Phoebus' departure from Minos EMI, Vandi followed him to the newly formed independent label Heaven Music and released Gia, which became and remains her biggest commercial success, as well as one of the best-selling albums of all time in Greece and Cyprus. Vandi also released the album abroad and the self-titled single "Gia", topping the US Billboard Hot Dance Airplay and making her the first Greek artist to top a Billboard chart.
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despina_Vandi) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode)