Grammy winning songwriter, Eliot Kennedy to perform his debut album A Yacht Named Sue in Sheffield City Hall show

Eliot Kennedy is one of the UK’s most successful songwriters, he’s written hits for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Take That, Spice Girls, S Club 7 and more. But, up until 2021, he had never released any of his own music. That all changed with the release of A Yacht Named Sue, a 10-track collection of yacht rock inspired songs.

“It all started with one song”, recalls Eliot, “which is called Tomorrow is Today, I actually wanted to work with a band called Young Gun Silver Fox. I wanted to show them that I’m not just a pop-tart, I can write in all sorts of different styles and this is what I grew up doing”

“This is the music of my childhood”

“This is my era of doing that type of music, blue-eyed soul, you know what I mean.”

“I wrote Tomorrow is Today just to show those guys that I could write in that style, and I sent it to Gary Barlow, who is one of my closest co-writers. He said, ‘El, you should write more of this stuff, if you were going to make an album what would you do?’, I said I’d probably write something like that because that’s the music I like and I just started writing.”

“Gary became sort of a pest about the project. Not long after I had a 50th birthday gig at Sheffield City Hall, we had the Take That guys, S Club, 5ive, and a bunch of guests. Gaz and Mark (Owen) came to the gig and we performed, Everything Changes, then we did some songs from the Broadway musical that I wrote.”

“Afterwards Gary called me and said, ‘El you’ve got to do an album, every time you do one of these gigs you sell them out and everybody knows we work together. You should do an album for that audience, but I ignored him.”

The Take That song Everything Changes was co-written by Eliot and it was a hit, it was the first number one (of many) for Eliot and saw the beginning of a long running song-writing partnership, and deep friendship, with Gary Barlow.

“A couple of weeks later, the Take That tour started in Sheffield and Danny was there, he works as a promoter. It turned out Gary had asked him to come and see me to talk about making an album, and doing a tour. Basically Gary forced me to do the album and the gig.”

This was the beginning of a concerted campaign by Barlow to coerce Eliot into finally making a debut album, it started with weekly phone calls and ultimately led to them performing together during the pandemic.

“We did one of Gary’s ‘Crooner Sessions’, alongside Matthew Morrison”

For clarification Matthew Morrison is not just a Broadway performer, he is also known for his acting, specifically his role as Will Schuester on the hit-show Glee.

“And, Gary said to me that all I needed was a webcam and a microphone to work on everything. It didn’t take too long until I had enough material for an album, so I thought, you know what? I’ll just put it out and see what happens.”

"Lo and behold the first song My Destiny ended up getting on BBC Radio 2 and getting playlisted”

“I wasn’t anticipating that. Ken Bruce seemed to like it as well”, I had listened to the song (well, the whole album) and said that I’d got a bit of a Luther Vandross kind of vibe from the song. He’s definitely got a considerable set of pipes on him.

“Definitely, Luther Vandross, Michael McDonald, that's my era. They’re the artists I love working with. I wrote a song that Luther ended up singing and Michael too. That’s my thing. They’re my idols.”

But let’s get back to A Yacht Named Sue, “I’ve always been able to write and sing, so I thought… Do you know what? I usually do these gigs for charity, where I get to sing all of my hits and work with artists.

“This time around it’s different though”

“I’m going to do a dedicated performance of the full album but the second half is going to be a bit of fun”.

“I always do this, it’s an opportunity to bring new artists on, my son Jack is just about to release some music and we’ll do a couple of his songs, Kenny Thomas is coming, we’re working on a new album together, so it’ll be a bit of exclusive sneak peek at his music.”

“It will be a personal and intimate evening with some behind the scenes stories from my career, and some very special guest appearances. I can’t wait. That’s the thing with my gigs, you never know who is gonna turn up.”

Eliot Kennedy ‘A Yacht Named Sue’ plus friends is on Friday, 18 February 2022, at 19.15 at Sheffield City Hall. Tickets are limited. To book, go to: https://www.sheffieldcityhall.co.uk/event/eliot-kennedy-and-friends