Leigh, Lyane

Born as Liane Hegemann on 8 April 1969. She attended schools in Grubbenvorst and Venlo, then she studied at the School of Audio Engineers in Cologne until 1998. Her singing career began in 1987 with her first engagements on the Coconut Records label. First she belonged to the pop girl band Twenty-One. For the Euro disco project Bad Boys Blue she contributed the female vocals on the track ‘Come Back and Stay’ and also performed with the group. In 1989 and 1990 she was part of the German-language pop hit formation Xanadu, which narrowly missed qualifying for the Eurovision Song Contest in both years. In addition, she published several hit songs as a solo artist under the artist names Lyane and Lyane Hegemann. 

In 1994 she started the dance floor project E-Rotic with her former co-singer at Xanadu, now producer David Brandes. The music actually corresponded to the style that was very popular at the time, including “Marafrasi” (= man raps, woman sings, in alternating passages). However, what made E-Rotic special was its extreme focus on the subject of sex. The songs regularly contained moans from Lyane Leigh. Well-known titles of the internationally successful project includeMax Don’t Have Sex with Your Ex’, ‘Fred Come to Bed’ and ‘Sex on the Phone’. Although Lyane Leigh only appeared publicly for E-Rotic until 1995, she continued to sing for the recordings up to and including 1998, to which her successor Jeanette Christensen then lipsynched. The project ended in 2005.

Meanwhile, Early E-Rotic singers Lyane Leigh and Raz-Ma-Taz formed their own dancefloor project S.E.X. Appeal in 1996 (which Raz-Ma-Taz soon dropped out of). This project continued at least until 2017. 

Meanwhile, in 2008, Lyane Leigh released a solo cover version of Kids in America as a single.

In 2015, E-Rotic was revived and Leigh made a comeback as a studio singer and has since returned to public appearances.