Maria Viktoria Mena (born 19 February 1986) is a Norwegian pop singer, best known for her singles such as "You're the Only One", "Just Hold Me", "All This Time" which charted in multiple countries.

[1] Both Maria and her brother, Tony, are named after characters from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.

Her father was born in Bluefields, Nicaragua where he lived until he was 10, at which point he and his mother, Mena's paternal grandmother, moved to New York.

[2] After moving to Norway in 1986, he played in several bands in Oslo,[3] which influenced Mena to write and record her own music.

"My Lullaby", a song from Mena's diary, expresses her pain from her parents' divorce[citation needed].

Presenting his daughter's demo to several record companies, Sony Music signed Mena to their label aged 16.

Mena made an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman to promote her first international album, White Turns Blue, which debuted at the top position on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart a week later and at number 102 on the Billboard 200.

2005 saw the release of Apparently Unaffected in Norway and several other European countries, fronted by singles "Miss You Love" and "Just Hold Me".

A significant success in Norway, the album has earned her three Spellemann nominations: Best Female Artist, Best Hit, and Best Music Video.

In October 2006, the song started getting heavy airplay again and this time it reached the official Dutch Top 40 and peaked at No.

48 at the Dutch year-end chart, outselling major artists such as Pink's I'm Not Dead, Nelly Furtado's Loose, and Beyoncé Knowles' B'Day.

In 2011 Mena recorded her version of "Mitt lille land" (My Little Country) by Ole Paus as part of a project by the Norwegian TV channel TV2.

On 23 July, the day after the Norway terrorist attacks and after requests from her Norwegian audience, Mena uploaded her version of the song to the streaming site SoundCloud.

[18] In April 2021 Mena made a new announcement, saying she will postpone the release of her new material until she can play concerts again.

[21][22] Mena also auditioned for a role in the Norwegian TV series Etterglød (Afterglow), where she was not cast but offered to make a song for the soundtrack.

[23] Notes As of 2013, Maria Mena had had 11 Spellemannprisen (Norwegian Grammy) nominations, and won one for Best Female Artist in 2008.