Lovely Rita, American star?

February 25, 2010 - 11:50 AM by

Everyone knows Rita, the longtime queen of Israeli song. But even she was surprised when a remake of one of her hits “Bo,” that she recorded in English a couple years ago suddenly began popping up on American Top 40 playlists over the last few months.

The buzz around the song – “Love Has Begun” – became so loud that US trade magazine New Music Weekly named Rita as ‘Top 40 Breakthrough Artist for 2009′ in its recently released list of winners.

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“It’s funny and a bit weird. I didn’t expect it at all, it’s something I really didn’t think about,” Rita told The Jerusalem Post this week as she prepared to travel to the US for a series of shows next month.

The song was recorded at the behest of a longtime American friend of Rita’s, Florida-based attorney Arnold Beizer. From what I can gather, Beizer, the director of the US non-profit organization Let Freedom Ring which focuses attention on US veterans allegedly still being held in Vietnam, is also a Bible Codes scholar and involved in other activities.

He took Rita into a studio and recorded “Love Has Begun” and a cover of Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings” and brought them back to Florida where producer Carlo Pennizi remixed them and added more contemporary accompaniment.

Meanwhile, Rita had forgotten all about it, and was surprised in recent months to find out that the song, which appeared on an album of the same name that Beizer and Pennizi compiled with other singers, was charting in some radio station across the US.

Hot on the heels of her well-received performance in Jerusalem earlier this month for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berloscuni, Rita’s headed for a short US tour, which begins March 13, and includes two shows in New York and one each in Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles.

Focusing on her latest album Remazim, Rita has performed the well-received show over 200 times in Israel and abroad. But this time in the US, interspersed with the expat Israelis, maybe there’ll be a few new American fans of Rita, who may not even know she’s Israeli.

Tags: , , , , • Category: A New Reality, General, Music, Pop Culture 

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