Hadjidakis was impressed by Nana's voice and offered to write songs for her. By 1958 while still performing at the Zaki, she met Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis. In 1957, she recorded her first song, "Fascination", in both Greek and English for Odeon/EMI Greece. She began singing jazz in nightclubs with a bias towards Ella Fitzgerald repertoire. Mouskouri subsequently left the Conservatoire and began performing at the Zaki club in Athens. During an episode of "Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey", shown on the UK ITV channel in the autumn of 2011, Mouskouri told the actress Joanna Lumley how she had been scheduled to sing at the amphitheatre at Epidauros with other students of the Conservatoire, when upon arrival at the amphitheatre word came through from the Conservatoire in Athens that she had just been barred from participating in the performance there owing to However, when Mouskouri's Conservatory professor found out about Mouskouri's involvement with a genre of music that was not in keeping with her classical studies, he prevented her from sitting for her end-of-year exams. She began singing with her friends' jazz group at night. After eight years at the Conservatoire, Mouskouri was encouraged by her friends to experiment with jazz music. She studied classical music with an emphasis on singing opera. In 1950, she was accepted at the Conservatoire. As a child, she listened to radio broadcasts of singers including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Édith Piaf. Mouskouri began singing lessons at age 12.
Her father became part of the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Athens.
Mouskouri's early childhood was marked by the German Nazi occupation of Greece. Mouskouri has said that a medical examination revealed she only has one functioning vocal cord and this could well account for her remarkable singing voice (in her younger years ranging from a husky, dark alto, which she later dropped, to a ringing coloratura mezzo), as opposed to her breathy, raspy speaking voice. The sister conceded that Jenny had the better voice, but Nana was the one with the true inner need to sing.
Financially unable to support both girls' studies, the parents asked their tutor which one should continue. Although Mouskouri had displayed exceptional musical talent from age six, Jenny initially appeared to be the more gifted sibling. Mouskouri's family sent her and her older sister Eugenía (Jenny) to the Athens Conservatoire. When Mouskouri was three, her family moved to Athens. Nana Mouskouri's family lived in Chania, Crete, where her father, Constantine, worked as a film projectionist in a local cinema her mother, Alice, worked in the same cinema as an usherette. In 2015 she was awarded the Echo Music Prize for Outstanding achievements by the German music association Deutsche Phono-Akademie. Mouskouri became a spokesperson for UNICEF in 1993 and was elected to the European Parliament as a Greek deputy from 1994 to 1999.
It became her only UK hit single when it reached number two in February 1986.
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" Only Love", a song recorded in 1985 as the theme song of TV series Mistral's Daughter, gained worldwide popularity along with its other versions in French (as "L'Amour en Héritage"), Italian (as "Come un'eredità"), Spanish (as "La dicha del amor"), and German (as "Aber die Liebe bleibt"). " Je chante avec toi Liberté", recorded in 1981, is perhaps her biggest hit to date, performed in at least five languages – French, English as "Song for Liberty", German as "Lied der Freiheit", Spanish as "Libertad" and Portuguese as "Liberdade". Her popularity as a multilingual television personality and distinctive image, owing to the then unusual signature black-rimmed glasses, turned Mouskouri into an international star. From 1968 to 1976, she hosted her own TV show produced by BBC, Presenting Nana Mouskouri. Her friendship with the composer Michel Legrand led to the recording by Mouskouri of the theme song of the Oscar-nominated film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Later in 1963, she represented Luxembourg at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song " À force de prier". It became her first record to sell over one million copies. Mouskouri became well known throughout Europe for the song "The White Rose of Athens", recorded first in German as "Weiße Rosen aus Athen" as an adaptation of her Greek song " Σαν σφυρίξεις τρείς φορές" ( San sfyríxeis tris forés, "When you whistle three times"). Over the span of her career, she has released over 200 albums in at least twelve languages, including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese and Corsican.