| Pete Kirtley | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Peter Edward Kirtley |
| Born | 14 April 1972 |
| Origin | Cuckfield, Sussex |
| Genres | Pop Dance Pop Pop rock |
| Occupations | Songwriter Producer Publisher |
Pete Kirtley is an English multi-platinum and Ivor Novello Award winning songwriter,[1] record producer and recently established publisher. He has produced over 150 records worldwide with sales exceeding 10 million, including four number one hits worldwide, eight UK top ten hits and twenty top forty hits in Germany. He has written and/or produced for artists such as the Sugababes, Hear'Say, Armin Van Buuren, Kim Wilde, Mutya Buena and Stephen Gately. His production collaborations include Ryan Tedder, Guy Chambers and Stargate.
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Peter Edward Kirtley was born in 1972 in Cuckfield, Sussex, but moved to Surrey at a young age. The younger of two children, his father was a semi-professional musician who had at one time been under contract to Parlophone Records.[2] Kirtley's early musical influences included the Jazz-funk of the 1970s and early 1980s, together with most forms of Pop music. At the age of 11 he joined a band with Matt Goss, Luke Goss and Craig Logan who later formed the British band Bros. Kirtley was a keen amateur actor while at school, but at the age of 16 chose music as a career and became a professional drummer. For four years he was a member of The Blue, a band managed by Bob Herbert and his son Chris, the original managers of the Spice Girls. The Blue's only single, "Don't Leave Me Standing in the Pouring Rain", was released in 1992, but failed to enter the charts.
Although Kirtley had written songs from an early age his successful writing and production career effectively began with music for television commercials, including commissions by Saatchi and Saatchi. These were followed by tracks on a number of international albums, including the 1998 album, "Privacy", by Ophelie Winter. In 1999 he teamed up with Tim Hawes to form the writing and production team Jiant and in the following year they secured a track on Aaron Carter's 3 million selling 2xmulti-platinum album Aaron's Party (Come Get It), two tracks on Boyzone member Stephen Gately's solo project, as well as song placements with acts in Japan, France, Denmark and South Africa.
In early 2001 Jiant reached the final of A Song for Europe,[3], but this was almost immediately overshadowed by the release of Pure and Simple, co-written with Alison Clarkson and recorded by Hear'Say, the winners of the ITV talent show Popstars. Pure and Simple was at the time the fastest selling debut single of all time in the UK,[4] selling just under 550,000 copies in the first week.[5] In total more than 1.2 million copies were sold[6] and it was one of the few singles to achieve double platinum status in that decade. In 2002 Kirtley and his co-writers received an Ivor Novello Award for the best selling UK single of 2001.
Kirtley continued to enjoy chart success, achieving his 2nd number one single in the UK with the Jiant/Stargate co-production of Hear'Say's The Way to Your Love. His 3rd number one single was No Angel (It's All in Your Mind), recorded by the German band No Angels. Kirtley's 4th number one, Shame, the debut single of Monrose, became the fastest-selling German CD single of 2006 and the biggest-downloaded song since the introduction of the legal digital download charts in Germany in 2004.[7] Subsequent success included songs on Sugababes number one album Taller in More Ways, Mutya Buena's debut solo album Real Girl, which reached the UK top ten chart, America's Got Talent winner Bianca Ryan's self-titled debut album, plus the Armin van Buuren single "This World is Watching Me". For a number of years Kirtley worked closely with the German TV series of Popstars and produced more than 50 records for the winning acts from the show.
In 2010 Kirtley joined forces with BMG UK, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, to form TaPe Music Publishing.[8][9][10] Kirtley is a member of the Executive Committee of the charity Rugby for Heroes,[11] and co-wrote and produced "With Pride", their official anthem for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.