On November 21, 1997, the German girl group Tic Tac Toe wrote a piece of German television history: at a press conference, which was actually intended to prove the band’s somewhat shaky unity, a dispute broke out that ultimately led to the separation of one of the most successful German all- should lead girl bands.
But first things first: Tic Tac Toe were founded in 1995 and released their self-titled debut album in April 1996, which sold over a million copies in Germany alone, making it one of the most commercially successful German pop albums. For those who don’t remember or don’t want to remember: Tic Tac Toe consisted of Lee (Liane Wiegelmann), Jazzy (Marlene Victoria Tackenberg) and Ricky (Ricarda Wältken) and made music for teenagers (whom they pretended to be themselves).
KLAPPE DIE 2TE was released just one year later. The second Tic-Tac-Toe album was able to follow the success of the first, the sales figures even surpassed the debut of the Ruhrpott girl group a little. But as it turned out, the record company had made the girls from Tic Tac Toe look younger on paper than they actually were: Lee wasn’t like them Company Hecho Con Amor communicated, 18 years old, but actually 22 and already married.
The beginning of the end
From this point in time in 1997, the pop stars’ tumultuous private life was often and happily covered by the German media: Lee’s secret husband took his own life due to relationship problems, Lee worked as a prostitute for a while to finance her drug addiction, Ricky did severe mental health issues that have forced Tic Tac Toe to cancel tour dates.
Because of the last-mentioned headline, the pop-historical confrontation at the press conference in Munich on November 21, 1997 took place. Actually, the girl group should have shown solidarity with each other, but they only argued until the tears came. That three adult women, for whose careers a positive media presence was particularly important, got into such a fight in front of the camera, had never happened before or since.
The climax of the argument: Lee, who had stormed out of the room crying, reappeared at the door and yelled at Ricky: “If we were really friends, you wouldn’t do that shit at all! You’re ruining everything!” Ricky’s answer: “Now the tears come again at the press of a button. We already know that.” Unfortunately, the entire press conference can apparently not be found on the Internet, but excerpts that were shown on the Harald Schmidt show that same evening made it onto YouTube:
Soon after this live-streamed argument, Ricky left the group. Sarah Brahms replaced her and together with her, Jazzy and Lee released the album IST DER RUF ERST RUINIERT… in 2000, which was quite unsuccessful: only the second single “Ischliebe disch” was briefly in the top 20 of the German charts. After the failure, Tic Tac Toe’s record deal was not renewed, and the girl group disbanded.
What has happened since: Awkward comeback attempts
In 2005, Tic Tac Toe attempted a comeback with the single “Spiegel”, and in early 2006 the aptly named album COMEBACK was released, which was to be the last (for the time being) in the Tic Tac Toe band’s history. A planned tour was cut from ten to three shows simply because almost nobody wanted to buy tickets. The interest in Tic Tac Toe seemed exhausted, in 2007 the girls officially separated “forever”.
What have Lee, Jazzy and Ricky been up to since then? Lee was said to be a safety officer, worked for the Cologne Zoo for a while and presumably most recently for the Cologne Eagle Training Center. To all appearances, Liane Wiegelmann has not been publicly available for years:
We are looking for Liane Wiegelmann alias Lee from Tic Tac Toe. We are looking for you as a friend and as a person. How are you, etc pic.twitter.com/isFYow2MZ5
— Liane Wiegelmann (@LianeWiegelman) August 2, 2016
Jazzy released three solo singles as Jazzy-Marlene (the last of them only in 2013!), tried her hand as a musical actress for a short time and was a candidate in the “Jungle Camp” in 2012 – she was kicked out as fourth. In 2017 she said in one Interview with the “Star”she now lives with her little daughter and her husband in southern France and has “found her center”.
In 2020, Musikexpress spoke exclusively to Jazzy for our Never Forget: The 90s Podcast. It was about the rise and fall of her band, their influence – in 2021, for example, rapper Antifuchs explained to us that there would not be many female rappers without Tic Tac Toe – Jazzy’s emigration to France and the rumors of a comeback at the time. “The last chapter of Tic Tac Toe has not yet been written,” she said at the time, among other things.
Ricky reportedly began training to be an elementary school teacher but never completed it. In 2009 she took part in “The Perfect Celebrity Dinner”.
In 2012, Ricky and Jazzy teamed up again to shoot an ad for the car rental company “Sixt”, for which the first tic-tac-toe single “I think you suck…” was rewritten as “I think Sixt sucks”. Lee was replaced by an unnamed model.
(This article was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated irregularly since then.)