Lenka Artistfacts

March 19, 1978
Lenka is an Australian singer-songwriter whose music career took off in 2008 thanks to her international hit single "The Show" from her self-titled debut album. The pop song, which was a Top 30 hit on the US Adult Top 40 chart, got a boost from several prominent media placements, including a commercial for Old Navy.
Born Lenka Kripac, her dad is Czech-born jazz trumpeter Jiri Kripac. The pair collaborated on "My Love" from Lenka's 2015 album, The Bright Side. According to the singer, it was a challenge because her dad doesn't really enjoy pop music.
Her parents got her to take piano and trumpet lessons by withholding permission to get her ears pierced unless she complied. She reluctantly agreed but hated the lessons so much that she quit - after she earned her piercings.
In a 2008 interview with Spin, she said her biggest influences are "the three B's: Burt Bacharach, the Beatles, and Björk."
After releasing her first two albums on Epic Records, Lenka founded her own label, Skipalong Records, and issued her third album, Shadows (2013).
Before becoming a solo artist, Lenka was a member of the Australian electronic-rock group Decoder Ring as a vocalist and keyboardist. She appeared on two of their albums, including 2004's Somersault, before leaving the band and moving to California.
Lenka first ventured into the arts as an actress. As a teen, she studied at the Australian Theatre for Young People, where she took acting lessons from future Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett, and landed roles on the soap opera Home And Away and the films The Dish (2000) and Lost Things (2004).

Her acting experience comes in handy when she's singing in front of an audience. "I am not exactly playing a character," she told Rolling Stone India, "I am just playing a part of myself."
In 2011, she married visual artist James Gulliver Hancock who contributed to the animation and illustrations for her music videos for "Trouble Is A Friend" and "Everything At Once," among others. Her sophomore album, Two, features love songs inspired by their engagement.
Her Shadows track "Two Heartbeats" features the in-utero heartbeat of her son, Quinn.
She enjoys reading young-adult novels like The Hunger Games and Twilight ("They really tap into my inner teenage vampire," she said of the latter book series).
During Covid, she and a group of friends got the idea for a contemporary arts and music festival in their community of Berry, a town in New South Wales, Australia. The Open Field Arts Festival had its inaugural event in June 2023 with plans to return every two years.
To know the singer, you have to really know her music. In a 2023 Songfacts interview, she said her true self lies in the weirder parts of her catalog, "but the upbeat fun stuff is truer to the Lenka that people know and love."

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