Press Reviews

Saw Chris Eaton on June 20th, 1998, playing with Art Garfunkel at Würth Open-Air in Künzelsau, Germany.

It was VERY strange - nobody had any idea that Chris was going to appear at this concert. It was a big open-air concert with the Flying Pickets, Allannah Myles and Art Garfunkel, appearing in this order. After we had been waiting for a while for Art Garfunkel to perform, a bloke from the radio announced that some ...(I didn't quite listen to what he said, as it meant even longer waiting for Art..) would sing for twenty minutes before Art Garfunkel would begin. Nothing happened on stage, so we sat down again. Suddenly one person walked onto the stage - we got up again and I couldn't believe my eyes!!

Did I get halucinations? Could this really be Chris Eaton? How on Earth did he get to play here? (He is pretty much unknown over here.) When he started singing the first song from 'Wonderful World' I knew it was really him.

The only time I had seen Chris live before was in 1995 at the Greenbelt Festival in England. I only knew [who] he was because I was a huge Cliff Richard fan and saw them both on television programmes. At Greenbelt he had sung several songs from 'Wonderful World', signed two posters and was very friendly when we had a little chat.

Anyway, after singing this first song he introduced himself speaking very good German and he mentioned, that he had a new album out and that the songs he was going to sing were from that album. As I had no idea about his new album, I'm afraid I can't tell you the exact titles. I can only say that the second song had a lot of 'Angel' in it and was wonderful slow, moody song. The third song was very catchy. Even though Chris was playing the piano, he managed quite well to get the audience clapping. Before the fourth song, which was going to turn out to be the last, he spoke to the audience again (partly in German). He told us to close our eyes and to imagine being alone in a rowing boat on a 'loch' in Scotland at 6 am and the temperature being chilly. A very slow, calm but beautiful song followed. Even though his performance was very short, it was an absolute highlight of the concert. It was a wonderful surprise to see Chris so unexpectedly and made it even more enjoyable.

Chris Eaton is rarely at a loss for words-or melodies. Together, his words and melodies have created songs for artists ranging from Amy Grant to Janet Jackson, with a cut on the television show, "Baywatch," thrown in somewhere in the middle. To run through Eaton's recent credits is to drop some of the biggest names in Christian and pop music including Donna Summer, Russ Taff, Sheena Easton, Patti Austin and Cliff Richard, among many others.

As if this weren't enough to establish his credentials, Eaton also is an accomplished keyboardist and has toured with Amy Grant on a number of her major tours. On the "Heart In Motion" Tour, he regularly accompanied Grant on the wacky song they wrote together, "Hats." Grant later recorded other Eaton songs, the poignant "Breath of Heaven" and "Emmanuel, God With Us," both from her best-selling "Home For Christmas" album.

With this level of acclaim and recognition as both a songwriter and performer, no one would have blamed Eaton if he'd chosen to simply stay behind the scenes, writing songs and handing them to other artists to sing. But that would not have yielded Wonderful World, Eaton's debut Sparrow release. It also wouldn't have give Eaton a chance to share his heart so deeply.

"It's very rare that I write songs about someone else's experiences," Eaton says. "These are my songs, and they're me. I've had 15 years of writing songs from my own experience and then someone else would say, 'That's the song I want to sing.'"

This time, though, they're Eaton's songs to sing. "The project is nothing more than the heart of me," he says. "I want the album to be infectious so people feel they can be the best that they can be. Not to be 'super spiritual,' but to be real."

Produced by Eaton himself and award-winning studio master Brown Bannister, Wonderful World is a state-of-the-art pop album, with obvious influences from the artist's native England, where he still calls home. With a sound Eaton terms "organic soul," the album allows listeners to focus on the lyrics. "We're just trying to stay close to the heart of the song so that it doesn't get lost," Eaton explains. "I've never been involved in a project where I felt it was together before we started. This time, it was, because we knew what we wanted to say."

Words are precious to Eaton, and each song was birthed through a pivotal moment in his life. The title cut, written just six weeks before he was due to record it, "really encapsulates where I am. It expresses the release that I'm feeling when I sing and when I play." It came as Eaton agonized between returning to life as a Christian artist-he recorded the critically acclaimed 1986 project Vision, which became a cult classic-or settling into life on tour with Grant.

"It wasn't a case of 'Wow, I'm going to be an artist again.' It was a case of 'How is this going to change my life?' I was settled; I was relatively comfortable. My career was blossoming as a writer, so why make the career move and become an artist again? I know this isn't my first album, but it is in terms of this new page in my life."

"Remember Me" also came out of a painful, if not devastating, time in 1985 for Eaton: "I couldn't sing it then because it was too close," Eaton elaborates. "Cliff Richard recorded it in England, but I always felt that, because it was my experience, it would be more potent if I did it. This album was the opportunity for that to happen."

Though "Remember Me" is a painfully honest song about his failed marriage, there is hope and healing that follows. "Something New" serves as the answer to "Remember Me." "God can do something new if we allow Him to," Eaton says. "I didn't want my marriage to fail. Thankfully, I've moved on to other things that God has for me."

"Something New" comes directly from Isaiah 43, a passage which his pastor in England spoke about the first Sunday in 1994. "I read the whole chapter and the whole essence, the whole idea of doing something new was just what I needed to hear."

But not everything on Wonderful World is something new; Eaton re-recorded "Breath Of Heaven," though fans of the Grant version will notice markedly different lyrics in the verses. Eaton wrote the song in little more than an hour one day, but it was a long process to get it recorded. Grant originally had planned to record it for Heart In Motion, but the song didn't make the final cut. Eaton decided to record it himself and releases it in his native England as a single. Despite the odds of an unknown artist landing a hit pop song with a blatant Christian lyric, Eaton did just that.

Not long after he hit the charts in England, Grant asked if she could alter the verses and make it into a Christmas song for her Home For Christmas album. Eaton agreed. "The way she did it was just perfect," Eaton enthuses. "But it's great to be able to do my original version now."

With lyrics that talk about love and joy, and a world music flavor, just who is Eaton singing to on Wonderful World? "When I do concerts, young kids love the music and old people love the music," Eaton explains. "I've spent too many years trying to figure out my own music. I just have to make the record as truthfully as the songs require. I want people to be invited into my life and feel they know me and are able to relate to my experiences. That's why all the songs that have stories are on the record. I want people to just see me an as ordinary person."

With the release of Wonderful World, Chris Eaton's listeners around the world will be agreeing on one thing: this Englishman is anything but "ordinary."