Casey Donovan Biography
Casey was only 16 and still a student at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney, when she entered Australian Idol series 2 in 2004. Throughout the competition she perfomed brilliantly week after week and received great praise from all three judges. She went on to win and take out the title of Australian Idol 2004 in front of a packed audience at the Sydney Opera House, becoming the youngest ever to win an Idol competition and the first Australian female winner.
Casey then set about the gruelling process of recording an album in a matter of six days. In November 2004 the first single released from the album, "Listen With Your Heart", debuted at No.1 on the ARIA singles chart and had the highest selling download of all-time from Telstra's bigpond downloads, while her album "For You" debuted at No.2 on the album charts. The second single "What's Going On?" debuted in the top 20, in February 2005. Casey then released a third single, "Flow", in July 2005, but unfortunately didn't gain a lot of air-play from radio stations.
In 2005 Casey was nominated for three Deadly awards winning two - for Best Album and Best Single. Previously Casey had won a Deadly for Most Promising New Talent in 2004. Also in 2005 Casey received two ARIA nominations for Best Album and Best single and was awarded an ARIA No.1 award for "Listen With Your Heart".
On March 26 2006, she performed at the Closing Ceremony for the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. In June 2006, SonyBMG dropped Casey from their record lineup, stating that she did not fit the image they want to promote. This was reportedly due to several controversial public appearances.
After Donovan faded from the limelight following her release from Sony BMG, she spent two years writing her own songs with her band. As well as this, she has performed at numerous intimate gigs, mainly in Sydney, but also a show in Melbourne, and appearing twice at the Dreaming Festival on the Sunshine Coast. In April 2007 Donovan teamed up with the former iron man Guy Leech in an effort to shed her excess weight and restore her singing career[1]. In an interview on the 29th of August 2007 on Channel 7's "The Morning Show", Casey said that she had lost 15kg, and more than 30cm off her waistline, and hopes to reduce this further in the coming months to her own set goal.
Her contract with Karma management ended on November 22, 2007, with no plans to resign another contract. As such, Norm Axford, Casey's stepfather assigned himself as her manager. Shortly following this, Casey released an independent EP, Eye 2 Eye, which she aims to use as a stepping stone to recording a second album, with plans to release it around mid-2008.
