Daryl Braithwaite fronted Sherbet, one of Australia’s standout teen pop/rock ensembles of the 1970s, while carving out parallel solo traction that carried his opening single—a version of “You’re My World”—to the top spot in 1974. Seven further solo chart entries followed before the decade closed. After the group dissolved in 1984, he engineered a strong return in 1988 with Edge. The set adopted a glossy adult-contemporary sheen without sacrificing melody and climbed to number one on the Australian album survey; subsequent periodic releases kept him visible on the charts into the 2010s.
Born in Melbourne in 1949, Braithwaite shifted to Sydney in the mid-1960s and sang with several outfits before linking up in 1970 with guitarist Clive Shakespeare, keyboardist Garth Porter, bassist Tony Mitchell, and drummer Alan Sandow to form Sherbet. Through the band’s lifespan until 1984 he enjoyed widespread acclaim both collectively and via standalone singles, among them his debut “You’re My World,” which reached number one in 1974. Additional Top Ten placements arrived with 1976’s “Old Sid” and 1977’s “Love Has No Pride/Fly Away.” Infinity released his first solo album, Out on the Fringe, in 1979. Sherbet paused briefly around that period, then resurfaced as the Sherbs in 1980; the new lineup struggled commercially and folded after issuing one last single, “Tonight Will Last Forever,” still credited to Sherbet in 1984. Braithwaite sustained solo gigs for a couple of years before stepping away from music to work as a road maintenance laborer.
He reentered the industry in 1988 after signing with CBS/Sony and delivering Edge. Four hit singles emerged from the album, among them the Top Ten track “One Summer,” and the project itself topped the Australian albums chart. Rise arrived in 1991, earned quadruple-platinum certification, and supplied “The Horses,” only his second solo number one since 1974. Taste the Salt, issued in 1993, peaked at number 13 and featured covers drawn from like-minded writers such as Bruce Hornsby, Robbie Robertson, and Sheryl Crow. A 1994 Sony-career retrospective, Six Moons: The Best of 1988-1994, also charted and contained fresh material including the Tim Finn-penned “Blue Hills.” Twelve years elapsed before the next studio album, yet Braithwaite stayed active through extensive touring as a solo act and with a reunited Sherbet, plus occasional musical-theater appearances.
The self-released Snapshot surfaced in 2005 under production from Scott Kingman, founder of the defunct Melbourne rock band Horsehead. The Lemon Tree, released in 2008, revisited signature songs in acoustic arrangements. In 2011, which marked forty years since his first Sherbet hit, Braithwaite issued his debut live DVD. French electronic duo Daft Punk drew attention in 2013 by sampling the Sherbs’ 1982 hit “We Ride Tonight” for “Contact,” the closing track on their multi-territory number one album Random Access Memories. That year also saw the arrival of his seventh studio album, Forever the Tourist, which reached Australia’s Top 50. Induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame followed in 2017, along with Sony’s solo compilation Days Go By, which returned him to the album chart’s Top Five for the first time in over twenty-five years.
