Amber

Dutch-born singer, songwriter, and label owner Amber is known for her infectious Euro-dance, house, and EDM-infused pop. She first gained widespread club attention with the title track to her debut, This Is Your Night, a 1995 Top 40 and dance club hit. Amber has remained a dance chart regular, scoring seven consecutive number one singles, including “Sexual (Li Da Di)” and “Above the Clouds” (both off 1999′s Amber), and “Yes” (from 2002′s Naked). In 2004, she launched her own JMCA Enterprises label and released her fourth album, My Kind of World, featuring the Top Five dance hit “You Move Me.” Along with live appearances, Amber has written songs for other artists, including Cher and Bette Midler. She has continued to issue singles and remixes, collaborating with producer Sweet Rains on 2006′s “Melt with the Sun,” duetting with Zelma Davis on a 2008 cover of “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough),” and releasing her own “I Don’t Believe in Hate (Drip Drop)” in 2009.
Born Marie-Claire Cremers in 1969 in the Netherlands, Amber grew up in Germany, where she was raised in a creative family with a songwriter/piano teacher mother and opera singer father. She took vocal lessons and eventually began writing her own songs, performing, and taking on studio work. In 1995, she broke through with “This Is Your Night,” a hooky EDM single that helped her sign a deal with Tommy Boy Records. The track became an international hit, landing in the Top 40 in the U.S. and paving the way for her full-length debut, also titled This Is Your Night. The song appeared on the soundtrack to the 1998 comedy film A Night at the Roxbury, and more singles followed off her debut LP including 1996′s “Colour of Love” and 1997′s “One More Night.”
Her sophomore full-length, the eponymous Amber, arrived in 1999 and featured several co-penned singles with producers Rick Nowels and Billy Steinberg, including “Sexual (Li Da Di),” “Love One Another,” and “Above the Clouds,” all three of which topped Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart. Also included on the album was a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” a collaboration with Stars on 54 featuring Ultra Naté and Jocelyn Enriquez; the track additionally appeared on the soundtrack to the movie 54. Buoyed by the success of “Sexual (Li Da Di),” the Amber record made it to the Top Ten on both Billboard’s Independent Albums and Heatseekers charts. A remix album of her hits was released in 2000 featuring contributions by Deep Dish, Junior Vasquez, and Hex Hector.
In 2002, Amber returned with her third full-length album, Naked, along two chart-topping dance hits, “Yes!” and “The Need to Be Naked.” The set found her continuing to develop her approach and move somewhat away from a Euro-dance sound. It reached number seven on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. At the same time, she was garnering acclaim as a songwriter for other artists, co-penning Bette Midler’s “Bless You Child” and earning a 2004 Grammy nomination for her work on Cher’s “Love One Another.”
After parting ways with Tommy Boy Records, Amber founded her own JMCA Enterprises label and in 2004 released her fourth long-player, My Kind of World. Co-produced with Wolfram Dettki, the album spawned three Top 20 Billboard Dance Club Songs hits with “You Move Me,” “Voodoo,” and “And Just Like That.” More non-album singles followed, including a 2006 collaboration with producer Sweet Rains “Melt with the Sun,” which hit number five on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart. In 2008, she collaborated with C+C Music Factory’s Zelma Davis on a cover of the classic Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand duet “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” That same year, she re-released her debut single “This Is Your Night” as a series of remixes that helped bring it back into rotation. Another non-album track, “I Don’t Believe in Hate (Drip Drop),” arrived in 2009.
A longtime supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, Amber has performed at numerous pride festivals, including appearing as the closing act at the 2009 Baltimore gay pride festival, the 2010 Pittsburgh gay pride festival, and the 2010 Providence gay pride festival. In 2021, Reservoir Media obtained Tommy Boy Music and began releasing previously unavailable remixes of many of Amber’s songs, including “Sexual (Li Da Di)” [Plasma Trance Remix] and others. ~ Matt Collar