page_title: Sertab Erener
section_title: Influences
hierarchical_section_title: Sertab Erener / Artistry / Influences
caption_attribution_description: Publicity photo of Barbra Streisand from her first television special My Name is Barbra".
context_page_description: Sertab Erener is a Turkish singer, songwriter and composer. With her coloratura soprano voice, she started working as a backing vocalist for Sezen Aksu, and with Aksu's help she released her first studio album in the 1990s. Because of her education in classical music, she initially had difficulties in performing pop music. Although she did experimental works from time to time, she eventually preferred to focus on making pop music instead of making avant-garde works, in order to make her music heard by a larger audience. In some of her works, she combined Western music and Eastern music, and benefited from operas as well as classical Turkish music together with ethnic elements. With her entrance to Europe's market in the early 2000s, many of her works were also sold in Turkey as well as European countries.
  With Sezen Aksu's help, she made her debut in 1992 with the album Sakin Ol!, and made herself known as a Turkish pop music artist in the 1990s by releasing the albums Lâ'l, Sertab Gibi and Sertab Erener.
context_section_description: Erener spent her childhood listening to her father's performances of classical Turkish songs. Alanis Morissette, Sting and Tina Turner were among her favorite artists. Milliyet's Orhan Kahyaoğlu later said that "despite the influence of Sezen Aksu, she was easily stripped from Sezen's music style due to her own refinement and artistic background." Erener said that before Sezen Aksu, she learned a lot during stage performances in terms of communicating with the audience. She has named Barbra Streisand as the "woman of [her] life". She said that she constantly imitated Streisand before becoming famous, saying: "I can't say how I used to imitate her. I've studied this woman a lot, so much. When I decided to sing my own songs, I became aware that it doesn't work like that, with imitation. After that I tried so hard to find the identity of my voice."
caption: Erener was influenced by Barbra Streisand as she developed her singing style
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