Vanessa Mai is a chart-topping German singer who straddles the worlds of pop and schlager music. ∙ Starting in 2012, she was the lead singer of the pop group Wolkenfrei, and she kept using the name as a solo act after the other members left the project in 2015. ∙ She adopted the Vanessa Mai moniker in 2016—“Mai” is a reference to her birth month—when she released her debut album, Für dich, which has been certified triple-Gold. ∙ In 2016, she was a judge on Deutschland sucht den Superstar (Germany’s American Idol), and she competed on Let’s Dance the following year. ∙ Her 2017 Regenbogen LP reached No. 1 while spending 38 weeks on the German charts, and 2018’s follow-up, SCHLAGER, also hit No. 1. ∙ Mai teamed up with German rapper Olexesh—who’d proposed the collaboration via a social media post—on “Wir 2 immer 1,” the lead single from SCHLAGER. ∙ In 2020, she released Für immer, which climbed to No. 2 on the German album charts.