Amber

Dutch-born singer, songwriter, and label owner Amber first rose to prominence through her distinctive blend of Euro-dance, house, and EDM-tinged pop. The title track from her 1995 debut album This Is Your Night introduced her to club audiences and reached both the Top 40 and dance charts. She maintained a steady presence on dance rankings by notching seven straight number-one singles, among them “Sexual (Li Da Di)” and “Above the Clouds,” both drawn from the 1999 release Amber, as well as “Yes” from the 2002 album Naked. Establishing her own JMCA Enterprises imprint in 2004, she issued her fourth album My Kind of World, which included the Top Five dance single “You Move Me.” Beyond performing, she has supplied material for fellow artists such as Cher and Bette Midler, and she has kept releasing singles and remixes—among them the 2006 Sweet Rains collaboration “Melt with the Sun,” a 2008 duet with Zelma Davis on the Donna Summer–Barbra Streisand classic “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough),” and her own 2009 track “I Don’t Believe in Hate (Drip Drop).”

Born Marie-Claire Cremers in the Netherlands in 1969, Amber spent her formative years in Germany inside a musically inclined household headed by a songwriter and piano-teacher mother and an opera-singer father. After studying voice she began composing original material, performing live, and contributing to studio sessions. Her breakthrough arrived in 1995 with the catchy EDM cut “This Is Your Night,” which secured a Tommy Boy Records contract, crossed into the U.S. Top 40, and anchored her self-titled debut album. The song later featured on the 1998 comedy soundtrack A Night at the Roxbury, while subsequent singles from the same LP included 1996’s “Colour of Love” and 1997’s “One More Night.”

Amber’s sophomore effort, the self-titled Amber, appeared in 1999 and showcased several tracks she co-wrote with producers Rick Nowels and Billy Steinberg; three of them—“Sexual (Li Da Di),” “Love One Another,” and “Above the Clouds”—reached the summit of Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart. The album also contained a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” recorded with Stars on 54 alongside Ultra Naté and Jocelyn Enriquez and featured on the film 54 soundtrack. Powered by the success of “Sexual (Li Da Di),” Amber placed in the Top Ten on both the Independent Albums and Heatseekers charts. A 2000 remix collection followed, boasting reworkings by Deep Dish, Junior Vasquez, and Hex Hector.

Her third studio album, Naked, arrived in 2002 and yielded two further dance-chart toppers, “Yes!” and “The Need to Be Naked,” while reflecting a subtle shift away from pure Euro-dance textures; the project peaked at number seven on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums tally. Concurrently she earned recognition as a songwriter, co-authoring Bette Midler’s “Bless You Child” and receiving a 2004 Grammy nomination for Cher’s “Love One Another.”

After leaving Tommy Boy, Amber activated her JMCA Enterprises label and delivered her fourth album, My Kind of World, in 2004. Co-produced with Wolfram Dettki, the record generated three Billboard Dance Club Songs entries inside the Top 20—“You Move Me,” “Voodoo,” and “And Just Like That.” Additional non-album releases included the 2006 Sweet Rains collaboration “Melt with the Sun,” which reached number five on the Dance Club Songs chart, and a 2008 pairing with C+C Music Factory’s Zelma Davis on “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” That same year she reissued “This Is Your Night” in fresh remixes, and in 2009 she unveiled the standalone single “I Don’t Believe in Hate (Drip Drop).”

An enduring advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, Amber has headlined numerous pride events, closing the 2009 Baltimore, 2010 Pittsburgh, and 2010 Providence festivals. In 2021 Reservoir Media’s acquisition of Tommy Boy Music prompted the release of previously unavailable remixes, among them the Plasma Trance version of “Sexual (Li Da Di).”