Revolution Of The Heart - Overview

Revolution Of The Heart - Overview

In the making of popular recorded music during the last half of the 20th Century, a tiny yet prolific core of ‘super songwriters’ emerged.

Among them Burt Bacharach, Leiber and Stoller, Hal David, Diane Warren, Brian and Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, Gerry Goffin, Carole King – and Albert Hammond.

Whether or not they had enjoyed success as artists themselves, each possessed the inspired, versatile and enduring gift of continually and repeatedly writing songs which touched listeners across all boundaries of age, language and musical genre. Hit after hit after hit.

In the face of such success, these writers are often even more remarkable for their anonymity, a natural consequence of the tendency to always associate a song with the singer or band performing it.

Equally, the really accomplished songwriters have been able to consistently write material which is appealing to new generations of performers and, in turn, to the new audiences which embrace them.

The specific measure of Albert Hammond’s achievement is that everyone knows – and can hum or sing - far, far more of his songs than they actually realise he has written, assuming they even know his name in the first place. Yet, without exception, he has never actually written songs with anyone other than himself recording them in mind – even though his work has been recorded by artists like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Celine Dion, Tina Turner, KD Lang, Cass Elliot and Bonnie Tyler through to Tom Jones, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Art Garfunkel, Willie Nelson, Julio Iglesias, Johnny Cash and Josh Groban. Groups which have enjoyed success with Hammond songs include The Hollies, Steppenwolf, The Carpenters, Aswad and Ace Of Base.

“I never write songs as hit records or anything like that,” he explains. “I just write them because I love them. And I’ve never written a song for an artist. You know, when people say ‘Oh, you wrote for Tina (Turner) and you wrote for Whitney,’ I always wrote ’em for me, you know. Then the artist does them their way, fine, no problem – but I wrote ’em for me. They become what I think are really unique songs, because you wrote them for you. What I think is that there is nobody more unique that oneself.”

In part, Hammond attributes his almost matchless run of hit songs to his cosmopolitan upbringing; he is London-born but was raised in Gibraltar, well-travelled in Spain, Morocco and, ultimately, America.

“Having grown up in Gibraltar, I guess I heard more music maybe than if I’d grown up in London. Probably in London I would have heard one kind of music only, but in Gibraltar you heard everything from flamenco to Arabic to Mexican to R 'n' B to rock to pop to – everything. So I would imagine Gibraltar is an influence in my life.”

It was certainly a major contributing factor towards his immense success in the Spanish-speaking market, a direct consequence of Hammond becoming fluent in the language while living in Gibraltar.

Subsequently, Hammond has recorded a number of albums of his own in Spanish, written songs recorded by many Spanish artists and produced several albums for the market – proving, beyond all doubt, that the true talent of an accomplished writer is that quality songs, and music, really do translate – and that music truly is a universal language.