Ben's Brother

Ben's Brother

Ben's Brother performing in 2007
Photo: Brian Marks
Background information
Origin London, UK
Genres Post-Britpop, indie pop
Years active 2006–present
Labels Island, Universal
Members Jamie Hartman
Kiris Houston
Karl Brazil
Malcolm Moore
Luke Potashnick

Ben's Brother are a five-piece English band, headed by founder Jamie Hartman. The band was named after Jamie's big brother Ben, whose shadow he lived in as a teenager. Hartman always considered himself the beta male of the family, which gave him the idea for the title of their debut album.

Music career

Their debut album, Beta Male Fairytales, was released on 6 August 2007, and went to number 3 on iTunes UK and achieved Gold status. Successes followed in Europe and North and South America.

A song from their album, "God By Another Name", became the first iTunes Store free single of the week to be made available in the iTunes Plus format. Beginning in September 2007, their song "Stuttering" was featured in a Dentyne Ice commercial in Canada and the U.S. This turned into a larger partnership where the band gave away free songs to fans and flew a fan to see them play in Texas, via a specially created website.[1]

The band made their American festival debut at South by Southwest in March 2008.[2]

In 2008, the band were nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in the category of Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Let Me Out".[3]

Dropped by EMI and despite the Ivor Novello nomination and worldwide success of Beta Male Fairytales, the band formed their own label and recorded their second studio album in Autumn 2008. The first single from the album, "Apologise", was released in early 2009 and was co-written with Natalie Imbruglia (who recorded a version for her forthcoming album). The band was then signed to Island Records for the forthcoming singles from the album Battling Giants, which contains a duet with Anastacia, "Stalemate", and other vocal collaborations including Jason Mraz on the title track and Jack MacManus, Cass Lowe and Pete Gordeno doing group harmonies on the other tracks.

On 15 February, Hartman announced via his Twitter page that the band would continue to release music without the support of the label Island Records.

On 23 October, Hartman announced via his Facebook page that a third album would be released in late February 2012, under the name of Jamie Hartman as opposed to Ben's Brother, although the band would remain in the same set-up.

Since 2002, the publishing interest of Jamie Hartman’s catalog has been represented by Reverb Music/Reservoir Media Management[4]

Band members

Discography

Albums

EPs

Singles

References

  1. ↑ Ben's Brother Dentyne.
  2. ↑ Erin Chandler, Schedule For The Levi's/FADER Fort In Austin Announced, The Tripwire, 10 March 2008
  3. ↑ The Ivor Novello Awards - Nominees Archived 11 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/publishing/1549674/reservoir-buys-brit-publisher-pp-songs

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, January 20, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.