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Brother Beyond | |
|---|---|
| Genres | Pop [1] |
| Years active | 1985–1991 |
| Labels | Parlophone |
| Past members | Nathan Moore David Ben White Carl Fysh Steve Alexander Eg White |
| Website | www |
Brother Beyond were a British pop band who had success in the pop rock genre in the late 1980s.
 | This section may be confusing or unclear to readers.(February 2021) |
The group's first four singles, "I Should Have Lied", "How Many Times", "Chain-Gang Smile" (produced by Don Was), and an early version of "Can You Keep a Secret?", were written by band members Eg White, and David Ben White in collaboration with Carl Fysh. The songs were also performed together by the band members, led by vocalist Nathan Moore. These early singles, released between 1986 and 1988, were minor chart successes in the UK Singles Chart. [2]
When the songwriters and producers Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman, known as Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), auctioned off their services to charity, Brother Beyond and label EMI won the auction. [3] The first song to be released from this session was "The Harder I Try", a UK No. 2 hit. [3] The song was succeeded by the song "He Ain't No Competition", getting to No. 6 in the UK. [2] The following releases from the Get Even album failed to make the UK Top Ten. All these singles were taken from the two different editions of their first album Get Even. [2]
After a brief hiatus, they returned with a brand new single in late 1989, "Drive On", which peaked at No. 39 in the UK, [2] from their second album Trust . They then released a cover of the ballad by The Three Degrees, called "When Will I See You Again?", which peaked outside the UK top 40 at No. 43. [2] The final release from their second album was the title track, "Trust", completely self-written, but only peaked at No. 53 in the UK. [2]
EMI America issued the album Trust in the USA mid-1990 adding two new songs which the group recorded in the USA and with a more American sound to break the US market. Both were released as singles there, with the lead single "The Girl I Used to Know" achieving success, peaking at No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100. [4] Nathan Moore has alleged the band were required to pay £100,000 to the mafia as part of a payola strategy to secure US airplay for the single. [5]
The follow-up single was "Just a Heartbeat Away", released commercially in Australia and as a promotional single in the US, which failed to chart. "The Girl I Used to Know" was released as a non-album single in Europe in early 1991 and peaked at No. 48 in the UK. [2] The group disbanded that same year, with Moore joining another boyband, Worlds Apart.
In January 2011, an expanded edition of Get Even was released, featuring the original line up of the album, along with four bonus tracks. The bonus tracks are extended versions or remixes of "I Should Have Lied", "The Harder I Try", "He Ain't No Competition" and "Be My Twin". [6]
| Year | Single | Peak positions | Album | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK [2] | AUS [7] | BEL (FLA) [9] | GER [8] | IRE [10] | NED [11] | NZ [12] | SWI [13] | US [4] | US Dance [14] | |||
| 1986 | "I Should Have Lied" | 166 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Get Even |
| 1987 | "How Many Times" | 62 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| "Chain-Gang Smile" | 57 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 1988 | "Can You Keep a Secret?" | 56 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| "The Harder I Try" | 2 | 78 | 20 | 32 | 1 | 20 | 15 | 13 | — | — | ||
| "He Ain't No Competition" | 6 | 53 | 32 | 39 | 4 | — | 19 | — | — | — | ||
| 1989 | "Be My Twin" | 14 | — | — | 53 | 13 | — | — | — | — | 10 | |
| "Can You Keep a Secret? (1989 Mix)" | 22 | 157 | — | — | 18 | — | 31 | — | — | — | ||
| "Drive On" | 39 | — | — | — | — | 74 | — | — | — | — | Trust | |
| "When Will I See You Again" | 43 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 1990 | "Trust" | 53 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| "The Girl I Used to Know" | 48 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 27 | — | ||
| "Just A Heartbeat Away" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released. | ||||||||||||
Lead singer Nathan Moore went on to sing with another boy band called Worlds Apart, successful in France in the mid-90s, and worked as a manager to such acts as Jessica Garlick. He was also a contestant on ITV's Hit Me Baby One More Time , and part of Lisa Scott-Lee's Totally Scott-Lee programme set up on MTV.
Drummer Steve Alexander toured with Duran Duran for six years before going solo. He has since worked with Jeff Beck and formed a musical collaboration called Flashman with vocalist Renn. His new project is a collaboration with bassist Simon Little called Little Alex. [15] [ non-primary source needed ]
After leaving Brother Beyond, Eg White formed the duo Eg and Alice with artist Alice Temple. Their production was critically acclaimed but a commercial failure, and none of their singles ever entered the UK Top 75. They released one album (which also didn't chart) for WEA in 1991, before Eg decided to go solo, covering the Jellyfish hit "Stay Home". Eg White won an Ivor Novello award for writing Will Young's "Leave Right Now", and has written songs for a variety of artists including Natalie Imbruglia, Joss Stone and Adele.
Sonia Evans, known mononymously as Sonia, is an English pop singer from Liverpool. She had a 1989 UK number one hit with "You'll Never Stop Me Loving You" and became the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album. She represented the United Kingdom in the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest, where she finished second with the song "Better the Devil You Know".
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Trust is the second album of the British boy band / pop group Brother Beyond, released in 1989, by EMI / Parlophone. It was their last album, since they disbanded. After their two major hits, "The Harder I Try" and "He Ain't No Competition", written for them by famous producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the band, as lead singer Nathan Moore puts it on his Official Website, "made the classic mistake of thinking they did not need Stock Aitken and Waterman... We wrote the whole of the next album ourselves and (it) bombed totally". The three singles taken from the Trust album were only minor hits, getting no higher than the UK Top 40. The first, "Drive On", which was also the opening track of Side 2 on the vinyl edition, got to Number 39, in October 1989. The second, "When Will I See You Again?", a soulful ballad by The Three Degrees, stopped at Number 43, in December 1989. The third and last, "Trust", the title-track and opener to the whole album, stalled at Number 53, in March 1990.
The Very Best of Brother Beyond is a compilation from British boy band / pop group Brother Beyond, released in 2005, by EMI label, for its «Gold Series», containing all the quartet's greatest hits, as well as minor successes, including their last single, that is the United States success called "The Girl I Used to Know". The record also contains five very hard to find 12" versions: "The Harder I Try", "Drive On", "Be My Twin", "Can You Keep a Secret?" and "He Ain't No Competition". The compilation, totally featuring 17 tracks, came out 15 years after Brother Beyond's last single. Besides the above-mentioned five 12" versions, the collection also includes all 11 singles released by the group, between 1986 and 1991, plus 1 B-side. The album contains their only 2 Top 10 hits ; 1 Top 20 ; 1 Top 30 ; 1 Top 40 ; 2 Top 50 ; 2 Top 60 ; and 1 Top 75. The greatest hits collection also includes the very first single from the band, "I Should Have Lied", the only one which never succeeded in entering the UK Top 75. As concerns the one B-side here proposed, this is the original version to the popular track called "Act for Love", previously contained, in its extended version only, in both CD editions of their first album, Get Even.
Get Even is the debut album by British boy band Brother Beyond, released on the EMI/Parlophone label in two different editions, both in 1988, generally referred to as Get Even I and Get Even II. The second edition of the album included two songs by Stock Aitken Waterman, "The Harder I Try" and "He Ain't No Competition", which replaced two songs written by the band.
The discography of English singer and songwriter Rick Astley consists of nine studio albums, five compilation albums, two remix albums, and twenty-four singles.
"The Harder I Try" is a song by British boyband Brother Beyond. Written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman, it was released on 18 July 1988 by Parlophone as the fifth single from the band's debut album, Get Even (1988). The song peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart the following month. It was a number-one hit in Ireland and entered the top 10 in Iceland while peaking within the top 20 in Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland.
"Be My Twin" is a song by British boyband Brother Beyond, written by band members Carl Fysh and David White. Released on 9 January 1989, the single reached No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 13 on the Irish Singles Chart.
"He Ain't No Competition" is a 1988 single released by British boyband Brother Beyond. It reached No.6 in the UK charts in September 1988. The song was written by its three producers, the Stock Aitken Waterman trio. The song is considered the follow-up to the highly commercially successful "The Harder I Try".
"The Girl I Used to Know" is a 1990 pop single from the boyband Brother Beyond. The song was recorded specifically for the American edition of their second album Trust, released in mid-1990, with the European edition, which was released in 1989, not containing the song. The song saw a change in the band's musical direction as this track was more funk-orientated and had less of the Motown sound of their earlier work. The song was written and produced by American producers Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers.
"If I Have to Stand Alone" is a song by American Hi-NRG and house singer Lonnie Gordon, released in November 1990 as the fourth and last single from her debut album by the same name (1990). Like the other tracks, it was written and produced by English songwriting and record producing trio Stock Aitken & Waterman, and a black-and-white music video was produced to promote the single. In spite of good critical reception, "If I Have to Stand Alone" did not manage to become a hit, remaining at the bottom of the charts in the countries where it was released.
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