Her debut album Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor
set a new all-time Dutch chart record on 20 August 2010, spending its
30th week at number one on the country's albums chart, beating the
previous record set by Michael Jackson's Thriller by one week.
The album became the biggest selling album of 2010 in the Netherlands
and has sold over 300,000 copies so far. In total more than a million
copies have been sold. On 3 October 2010, Van der Leeuw was awarded the
Dutch music prize "Edison Award" for Best Female Artist.In April 2013, her second studio album The Shocking Miss Emerald went to No. 1 in the UK album chart, becoming her first UK No. 1 album.
Caroline Esmeralda van der Leeuw was born on 26 April 1981 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands to a Dutch father and an Aruban mother. She started singing lessons at age 12 with James Gilloffo in Amsterdam and joined a girl vocal group, Les Elles, under his guidance. Following high school she trained as a jazz vocalist at the Amsterdam Conservatory, graduating in 2005.
In early 2007 Dutch producer Jan van Wieringen invited van der Leeuw to sing the vocal on a demo track he was co-producing with songwriter and producer David Schreurs. The song, "Back It Up", had been written by Schreurs together with Canadian songwriter Vince Degiorgio and was based on a hip-hop beat created by Jan and Robin Veldman. Caro's jazzy vocal style was considered a "perfect match" for the new song.
The song demo was pitched to various publishers and labels but although the reaction was positive they struggled to imagine it suiting any particular artist and didn't believe it had a strong enough chart potential. In the meantime, however, the song was posted on YouTube reaching public notice around the world. Radio stations picked it up and the song gained popularity.
When Degiorgio, Schreurs and van Wieringen discovered van der Leeuw's
sound had such potential, they set about working on a full album
presenting Emerald as the star in the summer of 2008 and used "Back It
Up"'s mix of 40s–50s jazz, easy listening, orchestral Latin, combined with infectious beats as a model.
Adopting a sample based approach but with live instrumentation, the
writing sessions drew from a wide range of influences including jazz
organist Jackie Davis, exotica composer Martin Denny, mambo king Perez Prado, 20s/30s jazz and van der Leeuw's own vocal inspirations of The Andrews Sisters, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan.
The usual method would be for Schreurs to produce the backing tracks at
home and then get together with top line writer and lyricist Degiorgio
to write the song. Van der Leeuw would occasionally pitch in her own
melody and lyrical ideas, and Van Wieringen co-created the tracks for
"The Other Woman" and "Dr Wanna Do".
After the record labels they approached failed to sign van der Leeuw,
Schreurs, van Wieringen and van der Leeuw created their own label Grandmono Records and released "Back It Up" as the first single on 6 July 2009. It was an instant hit and listed in the Dutch Top 40 for 12 weeks, peaking at No. 12. Kraak & Smaak provided a remix of the song. "Back It Up" was the most played song on Dutch radio station 3FM in 2009.Follow up A Night Like This became a No. 1 hit in The Netherlands.In 2011 Emerald recorded a version of Brook Benton's 1963 hit "You're All I Want for Christmas", sampling the original song to produce a duet with Benton, who died in 1988. The song was released in December 2011.
On New Year's Eve 2011/2012 Emerald appeared on BBC Two television on Jools Holland's Hootenanny show backed by the Jools Holland Rhythm & Blues Orchestra.
In early 2012, Emerald won two German awards: a Goldene Kamera for Best Musik International and an Echo Award for Best Newcomer International, beating out other Echo nominees who included Lana Del Rey, Gotye, and LMFAO. She made her American debut in January 2013, performing in Los Angeles and New York.
In April 2013, her 2nd studio album The Shocking Miss Emerald was released it went to No1 in the UK album chart, becoming her first UK No1 album. She performed in the UK at The BBC Radio Theatre it was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Red Button.
