- Title: GERMANY: TEEN POP IDOL BLUMCHEN GIVES HER LAST CONCERT
- Date: 7th March 2001
- Summary: SCU (SOUNDBITE) (German) VOX POP: "I think she's really sad for her fans, but I think she will return and start again".
- Embargoed: 22nd March 2001 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: GEROLZHOFEN, GERMANY
- Country: Germany
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA9AGQ8I8SZX9ZE0WAALVVMJ9VV
- Story Text: Thousands of sad German fans had to say goodbye to the country's most popular teen pop idol 'Blümchen'. The 'little flower' (translation for Blumchen) announced last December that she was quitting. Now twenty years old the singer whose career started as a child said she wanted to shed her little girl image and pursue a more mature career.
Reuters attended her farewell concert.
It was just five years ago that Jasmin Wagner burst onto the German music scene as the singer Blümchen, but in that short time she has enjoyed great success as arguably the most popular of the country's home-grown teeny stars.
It was a great surprise to everyone that the star, who seemed to be at the peak of her career, should decide to retire. So why did she do that? "That's what people ask me, why stop when you earn money with it and get all this, you know, fame? People like you and listen to your music, come to your concerts, it's not that I don't appreciate that anymore and that I don't like it or love it anymore; it's I think about the steps I do in life and about my age. I'm twenty now and after five or six years, you ask yourself
"what can happen in the future"? There must be new adventures and new walls to break down and that is basically it, and I think as a performer you need to be honest on stage and when I'm going on tour right now, that's when I really like singing for my fans and enjoy being with them and saying goodbye and celebrating what happened between us all these years. But I think I sense it already that that will change and I don't want to, I don't want to just have this moment some day when I go on stage and say, oh my God, this is getting on my nerves and I don't want this anymore and I didn't. Right now I feel real lucky, because I have the chance to stop it when it's at a really beautiful moment."
Despite shedding her 'Blümchen' skin, there are signs that Jasmin Wagner is not about to give up singing, but would rather embark on a whole new mixture of other activities - like posing in a swimwear shoot for a German men's magazine.
But Blumchen will always be grateful for the support her young fans have given her over the years.
"Because my fans have supported me for many years, this was the best thing, I always thought for whom can this possibly be good for and there was always someone there who said, hey, I associate this song with a particular time in my life, this is very important to me and thanks that you've done this and you're doing what you do. And this helped me many times. I am overwhelmed with what has happened to me and very thankful and I have always tried to give back what has been given to me and I will certainly miss what has happened, but it will be a new start and maybe our paths will cross again."
Like many young singers, she has her eyes set on an acting career. She's just completed her first project with Sylvester Stallone and Burt Reynolds in Hollywood.
" How can I describe it? Essentially I'm in this film, but I have a small part, but it is of course not my film, so I can't say that I made a film with him (Sylvester Stallone), it's his film and I was able to be in it and that was amazing. I played a fan of a young racing driver and tried, like all fans, to get close their stars. It was very interesting for me to see how a film is shot and how the people work and how really this business functions, and this naturally gives me an appetite for more and so it would make me happy when some time I could play a bigger and more important roll in a film."
So while many fans are mourning the passing of the artist formerly known as Blümchen, many are eagerly awaiting the offerings of the one, now known simply as Jasmin Wagner! - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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