Lio

Lio emerged as a vocalist and screen performer whose initial prominence came in France and Belgium amid the new wave period. Associates such as Jacques Duvall, John Cale, and Sparks contributed to her output, yet she remains identified chiefly with 1980s successes including "Le Banana Split" and "Fallait Pas Commencer." Refining her approach toward greater elegance while remaining within synth pop, she issued albums at regular intervals and reappeared on the singles ranking in 2007 through the dance number "Les Matins de Paris," a collaboration with Teki Latex. Parallel to recording, she has pursued acting since the 1985 release Elsa, Elsa, accumulating more than 40 film roles that encompass work alongside Claude Lelouch, Catherine Breillat, and Yolande Moreau. She is the elder sibling of singer and actress Helena Noguerra, known professionally as Helena.

Born Wanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos in Mangualde, Portugal, in 1962, she relocated to Brussels, Belgium, in 1968 after her parents separated. Her mother and stepfather welcomed sister Helena into the household the following year. During adolescence de Vasconcelos resolved to pursue singing and adopted the stage name Lio, drawn from a figure in Jean-Claude Forest's Barbarella comics.

Encouraged by family acquaintance Jacques Duvall—an emerging lyricist who would later co-author several of her successes—she began a partnership with songwriter Jay Alanski. While still a teenager she released her debut single, the buoyant synth-pop number "Le Banana Split," written by Duvall and Alanski; the track ascended to number one in France. A year later her rendition of punk outfit Stinky Toys' "Amoureux Solitaires" also reached the summit. Her self-titled first album, containing those tracks plus the Top 20 entry "Amicalement Votre," attained the ninth position on the French album chart in 1980. Two years afterward Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks assembled the collection Suite Sixtine, which presented English-language adaptations of earlier material together with previously unreleased songs and B-sides. Produced by Alain Chamfort, her second album, Amour Toujours, appeared in 1983.

Lio entered feature films at age 23, portraying the title figure in the 1985 romantic comedy Elsa, Elsa. She returned to the screen the next year in the musical comedy Golden Eighties. John Cale also oversaw several tracks on her third album, Pop Model, likewise issued in 1986; the record generated three further Top 20 singles, among them the number-five hit "Fallait Pas Commencer." Additional screen work followed with a role in Claude Lelouch's 1988 picture Itinéraire d'un Enfant Gâté, while throughout the 1990s she continued acting, including voice work for the French edition of the 1991 animated feature Rock-A-Doodle. During the same span she delivered the albums Can Can (1988), Des Fleurs Pour un Caméléon (1991), and Wandatta (1996), each refining her sound yet preserving an upbeat Europop sensibility.

In 2000 she issued Je Suis Comme Ça: Lio Chante Prévert, a set of French chanson pieces for piano and accordion that set poems by Jacques Prévert. The live recording Cœur de Rubis arrived in 2003, succeeded by the studio album Dîtes au Prince Charmant in 2005. That year also brought Pop Box: 25 Years in Pop, a seven-CD retrospective containing bonus material and a DVD. She subsequently revisited dance-oriented electropop in 2007 as guest vocalist on Teki Latex's single "Les Matins de Paris," which climbed to number 14 on the French singles chart—her first Top 20 placement in two decades. Maintaining a steady screen presence in both cinema and television, she appeared that same year as a singer in Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress. A collaborative album with the band Phantom followed in 2009.

While continuing frequent acting engagements into the 2010s, Lio observed her longest interval between releases, spanning nine years from Phantom Featuring Lio to 2018's Lio Canta Caymmi. Conceived by Duvall, the covers collection presented twelve songs by Brazilian samba composer Dorival Caymmi.