Havana Brown (born Angelique Meunier, 14 February 1985) is an Australian Synth-Pop singer and dancer of Mauritian background. She began her professional career as a DJ after a short stint in the UK Girl Group "Fishbowl" (who broke up before they could release their first single). She started DJing in Melbourne nightclubs before being approached by Island Records Australia to provide mixes for a compilation album. This later became the highly successful Crave series, with all of its volumed peaking inside the ARIA top 10 and two of those volumes attaining Gold status. In December 2009 Brown became the Austereo network's resident DJ, mixing on the radio show Party People.
In 2011 Brown made the transition to being a pop singer, releasing her single "We Run the Night" to top 5 peaks in Australia (where it went three times platinum) and New Zealand (where it went platinum). Though Brown released a follow-up single, "Get It", soon afterwards, it wasn't as successful as "We Run the Night", barely peaking inside the ARIA top 40. Instead of following through with "Get It"'s promotion overseas, Brown enlisted the help of US producer RedOne (best known for his work with pretty much every single popstar post-Lady Gaga) and rapper Pitbull for a remix of "We Run the Night". This version of the song had an alternate video, and it reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs and #21 on the US Billboard Pop Songs. It also charted in other territories such as Canada, Norway, France and Belgium.
Brown represented Australia in the TV Song Festival for the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) in 2012.
Brown has, as a DJ, supported the Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears and, as a singer, supported Chris Brown. She also cites Janet Jackson as her major influence.
She has released an EP entitled When the Lights Go Out in July 2012 and released her debut album, Flashing Lights (only released in Australia and New Zealand) in 2013.
In 2015, Havana cancelled Crave after 10 volumes and 3 “club editions”, choosing to focus on her DJing and musical career instead. During this period, Havana shifted from her signature sound to a more R&B-influenced one. However, no full album release came out of these sessions, and most of the singles released failed to chart. Havana temporarily quit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, she released a new version of “We Run The Night” remixed by Teddy Cream to celebrate the song’s tenth anniversary. This version also features a rap from Hooligan Hefs.
Discography as a Performer:
- When the Lights Go Out (EP) (2012)
- Flashing Lights (2013)
Non-album singles include:
- “We Run The Night” (original version) (2011)
- “Get It” (2011)
- “City Of Darkness” (2012)
- “Whatever We Want” (2014)
- “Better Not Said” (2014)
- “Bullet Blowz (featuring Kronic)” (2015)
- “Battle Cry (featuring Bebe Rexha & Savi)” (2015)
- “Like Lighting (featuring Dawin)” (2016)
- “Glimpse (featuring Rich the Kid)” (2018)
- “Cookie (featuring Veronica Vega)” (2019)
- “All Day” (2019)
Tropes:
- Album Title Drop: "We Run the Night": "When the lights go out, out, out, out / Boy, are you afraid of the dark, dark?"
- Auto-Tune: In all her songs, but most prominently in "We Run the Night".
- In Da Club: All of her songs released so far have a club theme, and her earlier videos all feature her dancing (sexily) in a club.
- Intercourse with You: "Big Banana". Two guesses, no prizes as to what the "big banana" in question might be.
- Ms. Fanservice: Just take a look at the page image.
- Re-release the Song / Rearrange the Song: The international version of "We Run the Night", with RedOne adding to More Mega's production credits and Pitbull making the obligatory rapper-as-a-Special Guest feature.
- Stripperiffic: Oh yes. She dressed like this even when she was a fulltime DJ, which drew much criticism from self-proclaimed "real" DJs.
- Three Minutes of Writhing: Oh so much.
- Title-Only Chorus: "We Run the Night".
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Pitbull in "We Run the Night", saying the same things he usually does in his guest spots.
