October 1: Swedish Fame Factory winner, Sandra Oxenryd, is 31-years-old today.

 

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Sandra Oxenryd was born on October 1, 1982 in Kristinehamn, Sweden. She is a former economics student and floorball player. She started her singing career by performing at age 11 on national television.

At 18, she placed second in a look-alike competition, where she mirrored Swedish superstar Carola Häggkvist. After winning the Swedish Fame Factory in 2005, Sandra recorded her debut album with the largest Swedish schlager record company. An international panel decided that Sandra Oxenryd would represent Estonia at Eurovision 2006 with the song "Through My Window"; a song with up-tempo country-soul music written by Pearu Paulus, Ilmar Laisaar, Alar Kotkas and Jana Hallas. They also wrote the Estonian entries for 2000 ("Once in a lifetime") and 2002 ("Runaway"), which came 4th and 3rd, respectively.

Despite the song becoming a 'fan favourite', "Through My Window" only scored 28 points and finished 18th in the semi-final, therefore not qualifying for the final. For the delight of the Estonian audience, however, Sandra Oxenryd had two well-known backing singers from Estonia on stage with her in Athens, Dagmar Oja and Jelena Juzvik whilst the rest of the group were from Sweden like Sandra herself.

Oxenryd, along with Digital Bitch, covered Carola's 1983 Eurovison entry "Främling," which is available on the compilation album Absolute Schlager Hitmania.

On February 23, 2008, Sandra competed in Piosenka dla Europy 2008 for the chance to represent Poland in Eurovision Song Contest 2008, in Belgrade. The song she sang was called "Superhero", music by Knut-Øyvind Hagen and Andreas Rickstrand, lyrics by Knut-Øyvind Hagen. She finished in 8th place.

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