Papermoon

In 1991 guitarist Christof Straub and singer Edina Thalhammer formed the Viennese pop duo Papermoon. A fusion of folk and pop styles quickly drew notice once Austrian broadcaster Ö3 placed their track “Night After Night” in heavy rotation throughout 1992. Landing a contract with BMG, the pair issued their debut album Tell Me a Poem that same year. The record earned double-platinum status after moving more than 100,000 copies and topping the Austrian album charts, while its title single reached number four and stayed on the charts for seventeen weeks; the follow-ups The World in Lucy’s Eyes (1994) and Papermoon (1996) proved less commercially potent despite both achieving gold certification. Thalhammer departed in 1996 and was succeeded first by Roumina Straub and later by Barbara Pichler, after which the only new output consisted of the 2002 best-of collection Past and Present—containing three fresh songs—and the single “Doop Doop.” When her solo venture Tau, launched in 2002, failed to gain traction, Thalhammer rejoined the group in 2004. Since then the band has issued several further albums, among them the 2005 release True Love, which received the Amadeus Austrian Music Award the following year. Verzaubert, their 2007 album, marked the first project to contain solely German-language lyrics, several of them reworkings of earlier Papermoon singles.