Esmée Denters
Esmée Denters (born September 28, 1988 in Oosterbeek, The Netherlands) is a Dutch singer. She was a regular cover-artist on video-sharing website Youtube where she covered songs from Mariah Carey, One Republic, Natasha Bedingfield and Justin Timberlake, amongst others. In 2008 it would be Timberlake who discovered her talent and Denters would sign up as the first artist with Timberlake's new label imprint Tennman in association with Interscope
Denters is a singer-songwriter who began singing cover versions of popular songs on YouTube back in August 2006. She caught the attention of Dutch artist manager Jonathan Berhane who in turn introduced her to Grammy nominated songwriter and manager Billy Mann.
Denters' manager arranged for her to meet Justin Timberlake at one of his concerts [2] and from there they signed the deal. Tennman Records announced that she would be opening for Timberlake at 10 venues during his 2007 European tour.[3] According to several magazines she is the first unsigned singer in history to go directly from a personal YouTube posting to commercially performing on a major stage.
Denters finalised her deal with Tennman records [1] in late 2008 and began working with Justin Timberlake on her first album, on to which Denters appeared on Dutch radio channel Radio 538 on April 12 and confirmed her debut album was titled "Outta Here". She talked about working with producers and writers Ryan Tedder, Stargate and Timberlake. The first single off the album, is "Outta Here" (a song off the album of the same name, produced by Polow da Don), and was released to radio on April 13 and was made available to download from April 14, 2009. A video for the single began production on March 25, 2009.
Oprah Winfrey invited the rising star to appear on a special edition of her title show which was dedicated to Youtube.
In November 2008 Denters and Timberlake released a duet in the US called "Follow my Lead" as a charity single. The proceeds of the single will be donated to a chain of children's hospitals that Timberlake supports.
It was announced that in 2009 she will support Enrique Inglesias' Greatest Hits tour at European Venues.
On March 15, 2009 following Youtube's copyright dispute with the British Song Writer's Association Denters was banned from Youtube for a few days due to her covering songs which had been removed by publishing companies.
She has appeared on the The Oprah Winfrey Show, on an episode that was dedicated to YouTube, where her singing talent was discovered.
