Thomas Hübner, better known by his stage name Clueso, is a German singer, rapper, songwriter, and producer. Born in Erfurt, he started performing at the age of 15. His first album Text und Ton was released in 2001. Since then he has released 7 more albums of which the last three, Stadtrandlichter, Neuanfang and Handgepäck I reached number 1 of the German Top 100. His music is notable for being a mix of hip hop, pop and electronic music and sometimes reggae.
Musical career
Clueso, named after Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther, started making music in 1995. In 1998 he got to know his future manager Andreas Welskop and gave up his hairdressing apprenticeship. His first vinyl Clüsolo was released on BMG Ufa the same year. In 1999 he moved to the 10vor10-Studios in Cologne with Welskop. A year later he signed a label contract at Four Music and released Text und Ton in 2001. Around that time he performed with Curfew at the MTV HipHop Open in Stuttgart and at Beats for Life in Cologne. In 2002, Clueso moved back to Erfurt and recorded the Rowdy-Club-Tape 2002. One year later, he started producing his second albumGute Musik, which translates to "good music", which was finished by 2004. It does not contain any English tracks and concentrates on singing rather than rapping. In 2005, Clueso represented Thuringia in the Bundesvision Song Contest 2005, with the song "Kein Bock zu gehen", placing 7th with 63 points. The same year he was the partner of Start Ab, the "biggest non-commercial remix contest in Europe". On 19 May 2006, his third album Weit weg was brought out, where also the song Chicago was to be found. In conjunction with the STÜBAphilharmonie, a Thuringian orchestra, Clueso gave a concert in the Fritz-Club in the former Postbahnhof in Berlin on 3 February 2007, where he performed his songs together with the orchestra and his band in an arrangement for more than 70 instruments. This concert was also released on DVD, entitled Clueso Live or Clueso- Weit weg-Live. In May and June 2007, Clueso was the opening act of Herbert Grönemeyer's 12-Tour and in the same year he was nominated by 1 live for the 1 live radio listener's award, the 1LIVE Krone, in the category Best Live Act. In September 2007, the single Lala, a song, which was especially recorded for the movie Leroy, was released. On 14 February 2008, Clueso again represented the Federal State of Thuringia in Stefan Raab's Bundesvision Song Contest. With his song Keinen Zentimeter, he came second, only one point behind the winner. On 30 May 2008, his fourth album So sehr dabei and his second single out of it Mitnehm were released. The third single from this album,Niemand an dich denkt, followed in October 2008. In December 2010 Clueso released a book "Clueso. Von und über". The fifth studio album "An und für sich" was released on 25 March 2011. Same year Clueso collaborated with Udo Lindenberg performing the song "Cello" on the album"MTV unplugged – Live im Hotel Atlantic". The song was released as a single also reaching number 4 in the German charts. After having released number 1 album "Stadtrandlichter" in 2014, Clueso parted ways with his long-standing band and management team. He wrote his following album about this period of separation and fittingly named it "Neuanfang". The album reached number 1 of the German charts. After the release of "Neuanfang" he started working on a new album called "Handgepäck I", a collection of acoustic songs that he has written and collected over the last seven years during several trips and journeys around the world.
