Ireland is home to U2, The Pogues, The Chieftains, Enya, James Galway and Sinéad O'Connor, and yet guess who has the biggest-selling album ever there? Englishman David Gray, with his shining 1998 effort White Ladder.
In the mid-'90s Gray put out three albums, neither of which did much to grab attention for him outside of the folk-rock circles. Even then, he enjoyed support in Ireland. Having been dropped from his label after each of his albums up to that point, Gray recorded White Ladder in his bedroom and initially released it on his own, and only in Ireland. Eventually, songs like "Babylon," "Please Forgive Me," "Sail Away" and "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" helped White Ladder top the album charts in the U.K. and become a platinum-seller in the U.S., but the Irish took to the CD like no album before it. Gray ultimately sold six million copies of the album worldwide.
Gray has recorded two more albums of lush, acoustic-based folk-rock — A New Day At Midnight and Life In Slow Motion — and along the way he's picked up a pair of prestigious Ivor Novello awards for songwriting, a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist and two Brit Award noms. No longer relegated to recording in his bedroom, in 2004 David Gray purchased Church Studios in London, Dave Stewart's old recording studio where U2, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell and Eurythmics have all recorded.
Provenance: Born in Manchester, England, and raised in Wales.
Latest releases: Greatest Hits and A Thousand Miles Behind (2007)
© 2007 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
David Gray
