Chris De Burgh

Chris de Burgh, an artist blending art-rock foundations with occasional pop compositions, never matched the following he built outside Britain and the United States. Several of his tracks reached the Top 40, among them the 1983 single "Don't Pay the Ferryman," which peaked at number 34, and the ballad "The Lady in Red," which climbed to number three in 1986. British audiences sent "The Lady in Red" to number one and "Missing You" to number three, while additional singles charted more modestly; even so, his strongest commercial impact emerged in nations such as Norway and Brazil.

A&M Records signed him in 1974, after which he opened for Supertramp on the Crime of the Century tour and began attracting a modest audience. His first album, Far Beyond These Castle Walls, arrived in February 1975 as a folk-inflected fantasy piece in the Moody Blues vein yet failed to register on any major chart. The July single "Flying" made little headway in Britain but held the top spot on Brazilian lists for 17 weeks. This outcome repeated throughout the decade: none of his 1970s releases entered the British or American charts, while each sold briskly across Europe and South America. In 1981 the compilation Best Moves finally gave him a British chart entry. That success paved the way for 1982’s Rupert Hine-produced The Getaway, which reached number 30 in Britain and number 43 in the United States on the strength of the atmospheric single "Don't Pay the Ferryman." The next album, Man on the Line, continued the momentum, landing at number 11 in Britain and number 69 in America.

Late 1986 brought widespread success with the restrained ballad "The Lady in Red," a number-one hit in England and a number-three single in the United States; its parent album, Into the Light, rose to number two in Britain and number 25 in America. During the same holiday season a reissue of the 1976 song "A Spaceman Came Travelling" returned to the British Top 40. Flying Colours, the follow-up to Into the Light, debuted at number one on the British charts in 1988 but never appeared on American lists.

Although de Burgh ceased to register on American charts and saw his British sales soften somewhat in the early 1990s, he retained a loyal international audience. He issued further albums through the decade and scored a few modest hits, the most notable being 1997’s "So Beautiful," which reached number 29. A steady stream of live albums also began in the 1990s and persisted into the 2000s.

New studio projects marked the millennium’s first years: Timing Is Everything in 2002, The Road to Freedom in 2004, The Storyman in 2006, and the covers collection Footsteps in 2008 (issued a year later in Britain and the United States). Multiple European tours followed in the late 2000s. After 2010 de Burgh maintained a high output, releasing five more albums that included a second covers set, Footsteps 2, in 2011, the career-spanning Home in 2012, and fresh original material on 2014’s The Hands of Man. In 2016 he delivered his 26th studio album, A Better World, led by the single "Bethlehem." He returned in 2021 with the story-driven The Legend of Robin Hood, drawing on his earlier involvement in a stage production about the legendary outlaw.