Just Another Girl

"Just Another Girl" is the debut studio album by singer Violetta DiNozzo. The album was released on January 19th, 2009, and it was a minor hit for the singer, eventually achieving a top 10 peak. The album was led by the commercial failure "Wicked", but spawned three more top 10 hits, "Two Steps Back", "House Of Cards" and "You'll Wish You Hadn't". As part of 10th anniversary URAPS celebrations, Violetta released a 2-year anniversary edition of the album, which helped it achieve platinum sales and a new peak.

Background & Recording
Violetta had always had an intense interest in music, drawing inspiration from the sounds of such artists as Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and Whitney Houston. It was these singers that drove Violetta to develop her voice to its maximum potential, which she did; self-taught, she developed a 4-octave vocal range (from C3-C7) which she used to great effect in school productions. She played the lead role of Christine Daae in "Phantom Of The Opera", the most adventurous of her high school's amateur productions, to stunning effect despite having no formal vocal training, either in classical or contemporary. Her performance in "Phantom Of The Opera" drew the attention of A&R people from major labels such as Def Jam, RCA and Epic. In mid-2007, at the age of 16, she signed a 3-album record deal with Epic, and went straight to work on her debut album.

Violetta refused assistance from professional writers when sourcing material for the album, opting instead to write her own songs; this was an unpopular move with her record label. Violetta gained eleven writing credits on the album; eight were completely solo and three were co-writes. Since Violetta wrote almost the entire record single-handedly, it was Epic's condition that she only work with the producers they chose for her. The teen worked with such producers as Danja, JR Rotem and Rodney Jerkins, but played a major role in the production of the album, at the time having a clear vision of how she wanted the record to sound and which direction she was going musically; again, this proved to be unpopular with her label, since they saw her input as undermining their efforts to turn her into a hit-maker, and that she had no clue what she was doing due to her inexperience. Violetta was credited as an executive producer on the album, this was a condition Violetta insisted upon when agreeing to work with the producers Epic provided for her. This was almost a dealbreaker, but Epic relented, believing that Violetta's star potential far outweighed her difficulty to control. The album was recorded in July through to October of 2008, except for "Connect The Dots" which was rush-recorded with China in January of 2009.

Collaborations
Violetta worked with a number of different artists while developing her debut album; the first of these was Phoenix Rising, with her half-brother Victor Strong co-writing the lead single "Wicked". Alexei Monaghan and Tobias Strait co-wrote the song "You'll Wish You Hadn't". This collaboration was to give Violetta a starting point as she built up her album. Violetta was introduced to Alexei's younger brother Raphael at this time, and he worked with Violetta on two songs; Raphael wrote the song "Talk Of The Town", and co-wrote the song "Rip It Up" with Violetta, also providing guest vocals on the song. Another song, "Stop Me Now", was remixed by UpTempo for inclusion on a disc of remixed included in the DJ's studio album "Up To Tha Tempo" The final collaboration is the most high-profile; Violetta wrote the song "Connect The Dots" as a last-minute addition to her album, and submitted it to China's management for a possible duet. China agreed to sing on the track, and they recorded the song together just in time for the album to be pressed. Intended for a single by Violetta's management, original release plans fell through. The song was remixed by DJ Tiesto for inclusion on Violetta's sophomore album, when it was eventually released as the 4th single from the album and become a major hit.

Chart Performance
The album debuted on January 25th, 2009 at #15, with sales of 17,889 copies. It saw moderately low sales, but eventually reached a top 10 peak upon the release of biggest hit "House Of Cards". The album fell off the charts after 20 weeks, falling short of a platinum certification, which it would have achieved had the planned 4th single not been scrapped. The album sold 283,246 copies in total during its first run. In 2011, a two-year anniversary edition of the album was released with a bonus remix disc and all of the era's music videos, save final single "You'll Wish You Hadn't" which was released after the re-released edition. The re-release helped move another 200k copies roughly, enough to get the album to platinum certification. In the US, the album failed to perform to Epic's hopes, only achieving gold certification with a low top 10 peak. Despite this set-back, Epic retained Violetta on their roster with the intention of making a much bigger impact with her follow-up project.

Chart Run
TOTAL: 484,023
 * Week 1: 17,889
 * Week 2: 15,998
 * Week 3: 14,349
 * Week 4: 13,838
 * Week 5: 13,349
 * Week 6: 11,509
 * Week 7: 12,009
 * Week 8: 11,304
 * Week 9: 11,929
 * Week 10: 13,238
 * Week 11: 13,307
 * Week 12: 18,667
 * Week 13: 28,996
 * Week 14: 27,940
 * Week 15: 18,361
 * Week 16: 12,303
 * Week 17: 9,302
 * Week 18: 7,562
 * Week 19: 6,998
 * Week 20: 4,398
 * Week 21: #14 – 28,996 (RE-ENTRY)
 * Week 22: #21 – 15,998
 * Week 23: #28 – 11,732
 * Week 24: #38 – 4,231
 * Week 25: #30 – 8,738
 * Week 26: #20 – 13,307
 * Week 27: #8 – 52,984
 * Week 28: #10 – 28,318
 * Week 29: #17 – 15,998
 * Week 30: #24 – 12,009
 * Week 31: #33 – 6,274
 * Week 32: #39 – 2,192