Jane Comerford

• Name — Jane Comerford • Born — 1 January 1959 • Origin — Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia • Genre — Pop, country • Associated Acts — Texas Lightning, Baccara • Website — JaneComerford.de TexasLightning.net

Comerford received jazz dance training in Los Angeles. She went on to study singing in Hamburg, Vienna and Amsterdam, and learned to play ukulele.

In 1983 Comerford released a Hi NRG cover version of "In the Year 2525" under the pseudonym "Jane Rossi". In 1998 she released her debut album Somebody Sent Me an Angel with a collection of her own songs under the Polydor (Universal Music) label. Apart from live performances, Comerford is also an accomplished studio singer, songwriter and producer, running her own recording studio. She also performed for a short while as part of the new line up of the Spanish duo Baccara, who had originally enjoyed success across the world with their hit “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.”

• Illustration — Jane with Texas Lightning. In 2005, Comerford joined Texas Lightning, a Hamburg-based German country music-inspired band as lead singer. They released the single "Like a Virgin" (cover of Madonna's song), as well as an album called Meanwhile, Back at The Ranch, consisting mainly of country-flavoured covers of popular rock and pop hits. In 2006, Texas Lightning, along with Vicky Leandros and Thomas Anders, was nominated by the German public broadcaster NDR to enter the Vorentscheid 2006 (German preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2006, which actually took place in Hamburg). Their entry was a typical country song "No No Never", written and composed by Comerford. It came as a clear favourite with the viewers during the voting, and consequently Texas Lightning went on to represent Germany in the ESC. As Germany is one of the four biggest contributors to the EBU (organiser of the contest), their entries go straight to the final. On the final night, Texas Lightning came 14th, with 36 points, but the song had already reached No. 1 on the German charts.