Michael Ball

Michael Ashley Ball was born on June 27, 1962 in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. He made his debut in 1985, playing Marius Pontmercy in the original London production of Les Misérables, before going on to play Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera in 1987. In 1989, he reached #2 in the UK Singles Chart with "Love Changes Everything", a song from the musical Aspects of Love, in which he played the role of Alex, both in London and on Broadway. After a second-place finish in the 1992 Eurovision Song Contest with "One Step Out of Time" and a cover of Les Misérables (1995), Michael Ball pursued a dual career: he took on the lead roles in Passion (1997) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (2002), and twice won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for Hairspray (2008) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2013). He continues to record at the steady pace of an album or two a year until Back to Bacharach (2007), dedicated to the American composer. His repertoire of traditional pop covers, vocal jazz standards and pop and rock classics expands with Heroes (2011), Both Sides Now (2013) and If Everyone Was Listening (2014), before forming an enduring duo with Alfie Boe on Together (2016), where he returns to the number one spot in the album charts fourteen years later. The collaboration continues on Together Again (2017, #1), Back Together (2019, #2) and Together at Christmas (2020, #1). The same year sees his first number-one hit with the popular ballad "You'll Never Walk Alone", recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic with World War II veteran and centenarian Tom Moore and the NHS Voices of Care Choir. 2021 saw the release of her 27th original album, We Are More Than One, followed by a reunion with Alfie Boe for Together at Home (2024), featuring a new bouquet of pop covers.