Throughout the 1980s and for years afterward, pop singer Sandra enjoyed enormous popularity across Europe, Japan, and Russia, positioning her as Germany’s counterpart to America’s Madonna. Prior to launching a solo career, she performed with the disco trio Arabesque, and while she later scored her own chart successes, she also supplied vocals for most of the early releases by the global phenomenon Enigma, the studio project led by her then-husband Michael Cretu. Following a commercial high point in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she stayed intermittently active, issuing fresh solo recordings through the 2000s and into the 2010s.
Sandra Ann Lauer entered the world in West Germany in 1962. From her youngest days she showed a strong interest in music, studying dance and guitar as a child while entering talent contests during her early teenage years. As an adolescent she began laying down solo tracks, and in 1979, at seventeen, she joined the disco group Arabesque. Lauer remained with the ensemble for the next five years, during which the band scored charting singles and built a substantial audience in Japan. It was also in this period that she encountered keyboardist Michael Cretu, who had already released solo albums and worked as a producer. Their connection quickly became both artistic and personal, leading to collaborative songs that formed the foundation of Sandra’s initial solo output. After departing Arabesque in 1984, she promptly developed that material into a full solo project. Her 1985 single “(I’ll Never Be) Maria Magdalena” achieved worldwide chart placement and paved the way for her debut album The Long Play, issued later that same year, to enjoy comparable international reception. The follow-up Mirrors appeared in 1986, and a synthy rendition of “Everlasting Love” became another global success in 1987. In 1988 Lauer and Cretu married and moved to Ibiza, Spain, where they shaped the songs for her third album, 1988’s Into a Secret Land. This release marked her commercial zenith, generating multiple hit singles and strong international sales while shifting her sound from buoyant electro-pop toward darker, more introspective terrain. From the close of the 1980s through the 1990s that moody and enigmatic atmosphere characterized both her solo work—1990’s Paintings in Yellow, 1992’s Close to Seven, and 1995’s Fading Shades—and the new endeavor her husband was developing. Conceived near the beginning of 1990, Cretu’s project Enigma fused relaxed club rhythms, new-age synthesizer textures, and samples of Gregorian chant, occasionally featuring Sandra’s hushed vocals on its more melodic tracks. Enigma quickly became a worldwide sensation, with its albums selling tens of millions of copies throughout the decade. Even as Enigma thrived, Sandra continued her own trajectory, gradually moving away from dance-pop with each successive release and attaining European success that warranted greatest-hits compilations, reinterpretations of earlier singles, and remixes of her catalog by outside producers. Across the 2000s her style kept evolving and deepening through several albums. 2002’s The Wheel of Time yielded a handful of favorably received singles, while 2007’s The Art of Love offered a more intimate portrait, with Lauer taking a more direct role in both lyrics and production. By then she and Cretu were nearing divorce and had ceased regular collaboration. She remained on Ibiza, continuing to create new music, and in 2010 she married producer Olaf Menges. Her work in this later chapter encompassed 2009’s Back to Life and 2012’s Stay in Touch.
