Yalın

Early life

Hüseyin Yalın was born on March 30, 1980 in Istanbul, Turkey. Yalın wrote his first songs during his high school years and delved further into music when he got into college to study economics. It was then that he recorded his first demo CD. Yalın’s introduction to music goes back to his childhood when he listened to his father playing Gipsy Kings song to him using his guitar. Since then Yalın’s interest in music grew more and more each day and contributed to him becoming one of the most popular singer-song writers of Turkey.

Career

Following 1½ years of hard work, his debut album Ellerine Sağlık, produced by Selim Öztürk, was released. The song "Zalim" became one of the major summer hits of 2004. Unlike most Turkish pop singers, Yalın's personality was very humble and down to Earth. This gained him a lot of respect and recognition. Within the first week, the sales of his album reached 200,000 copies. By the end of the first month, the sales reached 300,000. The total sales reached 500,000 copies at the end of four months which made Yalın's debut one of highest selling records in 2004.

With his second album Bir Bakmışsın, Yalın arguably outdid the musical achievements of his first album. Although he kept the tone of his music similar to Ellerine Sağlık, the music quality and the sound of Bir Bakmışsın received better comments from Turkish music critics. The album was brought together by the same group of musicians that Yalın worked with in his first album.

In 2006, Yalın collaborated with American reggae artist Shaggy and Japanese-American diva AI on AI's album What's Goin' on A.I. with the track "Famous feat. Shaggy and Yalın". To date Yalin had sold more than 1 million records.