Biography

Elizaveta Valdemarovna Ivantsiv (Russian: Елизаве́та Вальдема́ровна Иванци́в; Ukrainian: Єлизаве́та Вальдема́рівна Іванці́в, romanized: Yelizaveta Valdemarivna Ivantsiv; born 2 July 1982), known professionally as Yolka (Russian: Ёлка, "Spruce"), is a Ukrainian singer, songwriter, recording artist, presenter and actress.

Raised in Uzhhorod, she started her musical career with R&B band. After that she signed to the label 100PRO and producer Vlad Valov and released her debut album City of Deception (Russian: Город обмана), which included major hits "Girl in Peugeot" and "High Spirits" as for as album was proved a success. Afterwards Yolka released albums Shadows and This Gorgeous World in collaboration with Valov, which was unsuccessful.

Since 2010 to 2012 she was a judge in Ukrainian version of popular show The X Factor. Yolka's breakthrough came after the viral success of her single "Provence" in 2011. She was nominated in three categories at the annual Muz-TV Music Awards 2011. Her fourth studio album Points Are Collocated (Russian: Точки расставлены) was released in 2012 and received widespread critical acclaim. Several Russian critics called it 2012's best album. Also magazines such as Afisha, Time Out and Interview included Points Are Collocated on their year-end top lists.

Yolka has fourthly received Golden Gramophone Award (for songs "Handsome Man", "Provence", "Next to You" and "Fly, Liza"); she was nominated for MTV's Russia Music Awards. In 2011 she was recognized as Singer of the Year by Glamour magazine and among top-ten of the most successful people in Ukrainian show business, according to the Focus magazine. In the same year she won in category Singer of the Year at the annual ZD Awards by Moskovskij Komsomolets. In 2016 she won the "Best Female Singer in Popular Music" Award at the Russian National Music Awards. In 2019 she became a singer at WorldSkills (section "Experiment": the speaker - is the inventor Pranav Mistry, the artist - Denis Semionov).In 2020, as part of the Top Hit Music Awards, she received the title of "Artist of the Decade", as the statistical music service TopHit found that "over the past 10 years, her songs have been played on the air of various radio stations about 19 million times".