The Gregg Alexander-Clan
Born on 28.06.1969 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1978 she played Stephanie Mills in the US-series "All in the family".
After she did some other characters in series and movies, she became the background-singer of Gregg Alexanders second solo-record in 1992. Two years later her debut-album "Arrive All Over You" was released on Epic/Sony. Gregg Alexander produced all the songs on it. Eight out of the eleven tracks have been written together by Brisebois and Alexander. The only small hit in Germany has been "Gimme little sign", a song originally written in 1967. It also was produced by Gregg Alexander and got some airplay in the radio. Sometimes even today you can listen to it.
In 1998 their collaboration expanded with the New Radicals: Danielle Brisebois has co-written the beautiful ballad "Someday we'll know" and did the background-vocals in some of the songs. She also did the US-tour together with the New Radicals.
After Alexander broke up the band in July 1999, Danielle Brisebois wanted to release her second (and again produced by Alexander) record with the title "Portable Life". Unfortunately RCA Records dropped the release. But the song "Everything My Heart Desires" made it on the soundtrack of the box-office movie "As good as it gets".
In 2001 the debut of Carly Hennessy's "Ultimate High" got released. Danielle Brisebois and Gregg Alexander are the producers and songwriters of this record.
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Gregg Alexander writes nearly all of his music together with the American songwriter and producer Rick Nowels. The are kind of dreamteam. This lyric from Alexanders first record "Michigan Rain" describes their first meeting quite good:
In the summer of '86 I got a
message on my answering service from a Mr. Alexander regarding
production on a song for a movie. When I returned the call, the
voice on the other end informed me that he was a 16 year old
singer/musician from Grosse-Point, Michigan who has "Thousands of
songs" and would like me to produce one of them for, oh... why not
a film soundtrack?
"Can you send me a tape?"
"Well, I don't like to leave tapes around."
"Okay, play me something over the phone."
The next thing I knew, I was driving down the freeway to meet Mr.
Alexander.
We sat in my car listening to his strange home demos, and after 15
minutes I told him we would make an album together. Gregg has been
in my life, studio and refrigerator for over two years. Now he's
yours.
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the soundtrack to Gregg
Alexander's home movie.
Rick Nowels
January, 1989
Today Alexander and Nowels have been working together for over 15 years. Both are responsible for the biggest parts of the Ronan Keating-record "Destination". To get a full list of the Nowels/Alexander-songs, just have a look at the
Songlist.
Rick Nowels list of references is quite long. It contains Hits like "The power of goodbye" (Madonna), "Here with me" (Dido), "I turn to you" (Melanie C) and "Sky" (Sonique). This PDF-document gives a good overview:
http://www.record-producers.co.uk/docs/RickNowels.pdf
Just like with the other artists around Gregg Alexander there are not much information about Rick Nowels. Indeed "Rick Nowels" seems to be an pseudonym for Richard Knowels.
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Carly Hennessy, 18 years old and from Ireland already performed as a child on the musical-stage. Two years ago Universal Music-Label MCA Records offered here a record-deal. The debut "Ultimate High"; which was released in 2001 and is produced and written by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois, was - commercially - a flop. The two singles "Im Gonna Blow Your Mind" and "Beautiful You" and the album were behind all expectations. Just in her home-country Ireland Carly Hennessy had a certain stage of success.
The attempt of the record-company to establish a second Britney Spears has failed. An
article in the Wall Street Journal describes the huge marketing-campaign, with which MCA Records tried to push the young singer to a mega-postar.
Musically "Ultimate High" isn't disappointing at all. Besides the already known Alexander/Brisebois rock/pop-style there is a convincing cover-version of the Sheryl Crow-song "All Kinds Of People".
There is a review of the album in the Review-section, tracklist and lyrics can be found in the LyricsBase.
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Born on March, the 3rd 1977, formally known as the Boyzone-member, now a successful solo-artist.
There a lots of homepage with a biography of him. If you want that, just go there. This article just gives a view on the collaboration with Gregg Alexander.
Besides the typical ballads ("When you say nothing at all") Ronan Keating also released the more poppy song "Life Is A Rollercoster" from his debut "Ronan". The single was recognized not just by fans, but also by other listeners, who paid attention to the fact, that this was not "another of these boring ballads". After the success of the single, the record-company also released "Lovin Each Day", which was not included on "Ronan", but got its appearance on the special-edition of the album. The song also got good positions in the charts and so Gregg Alexander and Rick Nowels were allowed to produce huge parts of the second Ronan Keating-record "Destination". One of the songs also was the second single-release "I Love It When We Do".
Links
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Gregg's Clan 