PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Chris Norman returns with New Album – Crossover
40 years after launching his successful career with his former band Smokie, Chris Norman returns with a brand-new solo album: Covering an incredibly wide range of influences, genres and styles, Crossover will be released on September 18th 2015 through Solo Sound Records (distributed by Absolute).
“The title just seemed appropriate because of the variety of styles of the songs, which cross from one genre to another,” says Chris Norman of his upcoming studio album Crossover. Indeed, the Yorkshire-born singer and songwriter, who launched his successful solo career with the single Midnight Lady back in 1986, has rarely sounded as versatile and genre-defying as he does over the 12 tracks on this album. Also featuring bonus track Forty Years On – a remix of the song Norman exclusively penned for the recent 40th Anniversary release Smokie Gold 1975-2015 – album opener Waiting serves as the album’s first single, and will be available worldwide online on iTunes, Amazon etcetera.
To support the album release, Chris Norman will embark upon on an 18-date German tour in November, with more dates in other territories to be announced shortly.
Born into a show business family going back two generations, it’s hardly surprising that Chris Norman fell in love with music at a very young age: Chris was only three years old when he decided to walk on stage and join the finale line up for a show in which his parents were appearing. Four years later, aged seven, he got his first guitar, and at 11, Chris started at St. Bede’s Grammar School in Bradford where he met Alan Silson and Terry Uttley – the future members of Smokie. In 1973 Pete Spencer completed the line up. From 1975 Smokie dominated the charts in UK and various other countries, Chris and the Band released a string of hit singles, including If You Think You Know How To Love Me, Living Next Door To Alice, Mexican Girl, It´s Your Life and Lay Back In The Arms Of Someone.
Having first tasted success outside the group with Stumblin In (a duet he recorded with Suzi Quatro in 1978), he left Smokie in 1986 after a massively successful decade and launched his solo career with a bang: The single Midnight Lady, featured in a popular German TV movie and became a massive hit throughout Europe, holding the number one spot in Germany for six weeks! Awarded “International Video Star of the Year” by CMT Europe in 1994, Chris Norman continued to release countless hits – including stand-outs such as No Arms Can Ever Hold You (1988) and Amazing (2004) – making him one of the few artists on YouTube whose videos have exceeded 10 million views per clip.
Following his 2011 release Time Traveller and his most recent There And Back album (2013), the singer, who was born in Redcar in 1950, returns with Crossover – his most genre-defying and wide-ranging release yet: “I decided not to follow any kind of style and just worked on any song I came up with no matter what direction. I took no notice if it was rock or country or whatever, the only thing I went by was if it was a good song and I felt it suited my voice,” says Norman of the album, which he wrote over the course of five months.
