Mark
Spiro is an
iconic American songwriter; an established award-winning producer, recording
artist, and accomplished musician, with a career that spans over two decades.
Among his many accomplishments, 45 gold and platinum records, and six solo
albums. His songs, and his productions, have been represented on records that
have sold over 100 million records worldwide. Not bad I hear you say!
Born in
Seattle, Mark moved to Hollywood where he met Jack White, an extremely
successful and acclaimed German producer who was then making impact in the
American music market with his productions of Laura Branigan, Stevie Woods,
Anne Murray, David Hasselhoff and more. White immediately recognized Mark’s
enormous talent and brought him in as his general co-producer. In a span of
three years, Jack cut more than 100 of Mark’s songs with various American and
German artists.
It was at
this time that Mark met German writer/producer Harold Faltermeyer, best known
at that time for his song “Axel F” from the film, “Beverly Hills Cop”.
Faltermeyer was a huge fan of Mark’s writing and production skills and asked
him to write a song for a new film, then called simply “Top Gun”. Mark wrote
the incredible “Mighty Wings” (recorded by Cheap Trick), and a classic film
song was born. Developing a reputation in the film industry Mark then wrote
songs for such films as, “True Romance (“In Dreams”; recorded by John Waite);
“Selena” (“Only Love”; recorded by Selena) and ”Music From Another Room” (“Day
After Day”; recorded by Julian Lennon), and Mark’s songs have gone on to be
featured in several television series such as “One Tree Hill”, “Marker” and
“Fame”.
Mark is
most recognized as one of the leading melodic rock songwriters in the United
States, with songs recorded by such classic artists as Heart, Giant, Bad
English, Kansas, Reo Speedwagon, Winger, and Mike Reno (LoverBoy). But, in
addition, he has also written for multi platinum country artist Lila McCann and
Latin Artists Luis Miguel and Emmanuel. Although he is best known for his
melodic rock style, it is evident that Mark has the ability and talent to write
for any style and genre of music that grabs his attention.
It’s a beautiful
Life is Marks first release since 2005s 'Mighty Blue Ocean'. So its
perfectly OK to write multi platinum songs but is it the same to perform them
yourself? (eg Burt Bacharach has more than a Marmite vocal style, but boy could
he bang out a tune)
I’m not
in the habit of pissing off the AOR/Westcoast community, but to be totally
honest, I found ‘It’s a Beautiful Life’ a bit safe and almost bland, and if it
were a heart machine the monitor would be showing a ‘flatline’ as all the songs
appear to be at a very similar level. I certainly wouldn’t put this in the
bracket of AOR/Westcoast as long as I have a hole in my bottom
The songs
are all listenable, but there’s nothing that jumps out and grabs you by the
throat. It borders on pop for the most part with a bit of country and easy (so
easy, its borderline anethesia) listening. Whilst not the worst by a long shot,
I doubt it will be in many a fans top 10 come the end of the year (except maybe
his mom’s!)
60/100
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