Mustafa Sandal

Mustafa Sandal — Biography

Mustafa Sandal, born in Istanbul on 11 January 1970, is a Turkish pop singer, songwriter, composer, record producer and actor, widely familiar under the nickname Musti. Fluent in English, French and Italian in addition to his mother tongue, he is associated with a sound that fuses Western pop sensibilities with Oriental melodic colours, usually resting on wistful, melancholy-tinged harmonies.

Much of his schooling took place outside Turkey: following Dost College in Tarabya and the Collège du Léman in Geneva, he attended the business and economics faculty of the University of New Hampshire in the United States before taking his bachelor's degree in management at the American College in London. His entry into the music business came in the early 1990s through compositions written for established vocalists; the likes of Ajda Pekkan, Sezen Aksu and Hakan Peker recorded his songs.

His debut album Suç Bende, issued in 1994, proved a major commercial success and turned him into a household name across Turkey. The 1996 follow-up Gölgede Aynı brought him numerous prizes, while Aya Benzer, lifted from the 1998 record Detay, climbed to the top of the domestic charts. A deal with Sony Music enabled him to market the album Araba internationally, and its title track resonated widely across Europe.

His fourth studio effort Akışına Bırak appeared in 2000, followed in 2002 by Kop, which earned him the year's best male artist honour. Under the Universal Music-Polydor imprint he presented Seven to overseas audiences in 2003, with İste arriving in Turkey a year later. His 2005 single İsyankar sold more than 150,000 copies in Germany and was rewarded with a gold disc. He refocused on his home market through Devamı Var in 2007 and Karizma in 2009.

The 2011 duet with Gülben Ergen, Şıkır Şıkır, became that year's most downloaded track. After delivering his tenth studio album Organik in 2012, he concentrated chiefly on single releases; 2013's Tesir Altında ranked among the year's biggest sellers. Later collaborations — Reset with Eypio in 2018 and Mod with Zeynep Bastık in 2019 — along with the 2020 single Damar all topped the charts. Depending on the source, cumulative worldwide album sales are estimated at over 14 million, with some accounts placing the figure near 20 million.

Beyond music he has been active in film, television and advertising. He made his screen debut in the 1995 picture Bay E, portrayed Acar in the 2010 feature New York'ta Beş Minare, and headlined the 2011 comedy series Başrolde Aşk. He voiced a character in the 2013 animated feature Uçaklar and appeared in Arif v 216 in 2018. In his personal life, his 2008 marriage to Bosnian singer Emina Jahović produced two sons, Yaman and Yavuz, before ending in divorce in 2018; in 2022 he wed Melisa Sütşurup.