Dancer Anna Ermakova makes her debut as a singer

For many years, Anna Ermakova was first and foremost “the daughter of”. She looked just like her father Boris Becker, and many people probably saw the tennis idol first – and her, if at all, only at second glance. That has increasingly changed.

The now 24-year-old works as a model, danced her way into the hearts of viewers on the RTL show “Let’s Dance” and won the 16th season of the show. Now she wants to pursue a career as a singer. Her first album, “Behind Blue Eyes,” is being released this Friday.

Ermakova’s favorite song

The title song is a cover of the song with which she enchanted the audience the most on “Let’s Dance”. But “Behind Blue Eyes” also stands for what has been going on behind her own blue eyes in recent years.

“I really wanted to cover ‘Behind Blue Eyes’. The song meant a lot to me – both when I heard it when I was younger and because of the magical moment on ‘Let’s Dance’,” says Ermakova in an interview with the German Press Agency. “That was a moment when I felt accepted for who I am – by myself and also by the German people,” she continues. She will never forget that moment.

The whole album consists of well-known film songs that Ermakova has reinterpreted with her warm, gentle, emotional, yet powerful, instantly recognizable voice. She sounds much more mature and expressive than one might have expected from the newcomer.

Music and films as a “safe space”

“Growing up, music and films were incredibly important to me. They were my safe space,” Ermakova enthuses. She wanted to reconnect with that younger part and discover herself in order to find her musical sound – and her genre, she says. “It’s a big learning, healing and gratitude journey for me and I’m excited to share it.”

There are 15 songs on the album, including a duet with pop singer Florian Silbereisen. With him, she follows in the footsteps of Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman and sings “Somethin’ Stupid”. There are also other classics such as “Son of a Preacher Man” and “Venus”.

“It’s a variation of the most different things and sounds from different time periods and genres. Male artists, female ones – it doesn’t matter. We have everything,” the 24-year-old describes her album, which means a lot to her.

Anna Ermakova “grew up with a lot of judgment”

“I grew up with so much judgement that I shyed away,” Ermakova recalls. “Then dancing meant connecting with my body – and singing now connected me with my voice, my words and saying things and expressing how you feel,” she says.

Ermakova hasn’t given any interviews for a long time. “When I was growing up, I wanted to stay away from it. But you shouldn’t hide from life and from being yourself.” And she wants to continue to develop that musically, as she says in the dpa interview. She can imagine that it won’t be her only work as a singer: “I’m definitely starting to like it.”