Marina Verenikina

Marina Gennadievna Verenikina (born 3 October 1978), known as Marina V, is a Russian-American singer and musician. She has released 12 albums and toured internationally, performing over 1,500 concerts.

Early life and education Verenikina was born to Gennadiy and Irina Verenikina in Moscow, Russia. Gennadiy works as a nuclear physicist, and Irina as a child psychologist. Marina began writing songs at 4 years of age. Marina was discouraged and stopped writing for a while.

At the time, the Soviet Union was falling apart and more western music started appearing on the market; as a child Marina was mostly exposed to classical music. After a friend gave Marina a bootleg cassette of The Beatles, she was inspired to write songs again.

At 15, Marina won a national competition, beating over 100,000 peers, for a fully funded scholarship (Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX)) to study in the United States. She graduated cum laude with a combined degree in international studies and economics-business and a minor in Spanish.

Career

Shortly after she turned 19, Marina met guitarist Nicholas M Baker, who inspired her to take her musical talents seriously.

In Sept 2006, Marina released her first live album, "Live at SoundMoves," which was recorded in one session at SoundMoves recording studios in Burbank, California. In 2006, Marina and Nick Baker toured the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

In January 2008, Marina released "Modern Fairytale," recorded with Nick Baker, Marina's band, and their friend and engineer Jared Brown at the home studio of musician Graham Nash.

In 2009, "Sunshine Guaranteed" from "Modern Fairytale" was featured on a popular iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge2.

In January 2011, Marina and Baker released My Star, produced by Guy Erez. It was funded entirely by Marina's listeners, who raised $30,000 for her on marinav.com. One of the songs, "Killing My Dream," featured guitarist and former Kiss member Bruce Kulick.

In 2011, several of Marina's songs aired on NBC's soap opera, Days of Our Lives.

Marina and Baker wrote the theme song for the 2012 film Truth About Kerry.

The crowd funded "Inner Superhero" album, featuring the song "Hello" with a video filmed in her native Moscow, won the 2013 Entrepreneurs On The Move award. The album was unofficially released in 2013. In September 2013 Marina's song "Begu" was featured in a Lifetime TV Movie "Taken: The Search for Sophie Parker"

In October 2014 Marina appeared at The Grammy Museum.

In March 2015 Marina released her first Tour Documentary, "Enjoy The Ride," filmed during her 2014 U.S. Summer Tour, C Minor To Shining Sea.

In 2017 Marina released her next fan-sponsored album, Born To The Stars. The official music video featured cameos from Steel Panther, Bruce Kulick of Kiss, David Ellefson of Megadeth, Thomas Ian Nicholas of American Pie and Jill Sobule, among many others.

In December 2017 Marina traveled to Moscow with the Grammy Museum team to open the first ever Grammy Museum exhibit in Russia.

In 2021 Marina started writing children's songs. She writes lyrics for all of the songs on the Kote Kitty YouTube channels, with over 1,000,000,000 views to date.

In January 2025 Marina released a new single, Symphony & Metal, featuring David Ellefson of Megadeth and Bruce Kulick of Kiss.

In February 2025, Marina's Russian-language song "Runaway Train / Я Как Стрела" was featured on Marvel's Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Season 1, Episode 4, on Disney+.

In April 2025, Marina's song "Begu", the Russian language version of her song "Run", appeared in The Amateur (2025 film), a 20th Century Studios movie starring Rami Malek (who also produced) and Laurence Fishburne.

On June 11, 2025, Marina's Russian-language rendition of Kylie Minogue's 2001 hit Can't Get You Out of My Head aired in end credits of Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2, Episode 5 on Hulu.

Personal life She became an American citizen in 2006.

Awards Hollywood Music Awards [nominated] (2009) for "You Make Me Beautiful" YouBloom International Songwriting Award (2010) for "You Make Me Beautiful"; Judges included Bob Geldof who gave Marina her trophy at the Awards Ceremony in London in February 2011 for duet rendition of Pat Benatar's "We Belong" with Dan Navarro

Discography Year Albums EP DVD 1999 Let Me Dream - - 2001 Lift - - 2003 Something of My Own - - 2005 Simple Magic - - 2006 Marina V: Live at SoundMoves - - 2007 Russian Bootleg - - 2008 Modern Fairytale - - 2011 My Star Small Collection of Interesting Songs - 2015 - - Enjoy the Ride: A Tour Documentary 2016 Russian Bootleg Vol. 2 - - 2017 Inner Superhero - - 2017 Born to the Stars - - 2020 In V Minor - -