Chris de Burgh

Chris de Burgh was born Christopher John Davison on October 15 in Venado Tuerto, Argentina. The singer with Irish citizenship began playing the guitar as a child before moving to London, where he signed his first record deal in 1972. He made his album debut in 1974 with Far Beyond These Castle Walls. While that first album remained relatively unsuccessful commercially, its successor Spanish Train and Other Stories reached number 78 in the British LP charts in 1975. Chris de Burgh, who collected countless gold and platinum awards in the course of his career, achieved his next triumph in the UK (number 72) with Crusader. His international breakthrough came in 1982: The Getaway, now his sixth studio album, stormed to the top of the charts in Germany, while also reaching a respectable third place in Austria. Chris de Burgh gained a global audience in the further course of the 1980s with his mass appeal mix of art, pop and soft rock. Number 1 albums such as Man on the Line (1984), Into the Light (1986), which included the hit single "The Lady in Red", and Flying Colours, released in 1988, made him one of Ireland's most commercially successful music exports. The megastar ushered in the new decade in 1990 with the live album High on Emotion: Live from Dublin, which reached the top 20 in several European countries. However, subsequent studio works such as Power of Ten (1992), This Way Up (1994) and Quiet Revolution (1999) also marked successful stages in Chris de Burgh's career as a singer, songwriter and composer. It is therefore hardly surprising that he remained a relevant factor in the music world in the 2000s. The LPs The Road to Freedom (2004), The Storyman (2006) and Footsteps, which was released in 2008, all catapulted into the top 10 of the German album charts. The same also applies to his later work: while The Hands of Man (2014) reached number 8 in the sales lists in Germany, A Better World (2016) and The Legend of Robin Hood, released in 2021, both reached seventh place. In October 2024, Chris de Burgh celebrates his 50th stage anniversary with the compilation 50.