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Robyn Hitchcock | |
|---|---|
 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, 6 October 2012 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Robyn Rowan Hitchcock |
| Born | 3 March 1953 Paddington, London, England |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, actor |
| Instruments |
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| Labels | |
| Website | robynhitchcock |
Robyn Rowan Hitchcock (born 3 March 1953) is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. While primarily a vocalist and guitarist, he also plays harmonica, piano, and bass guitar. After leading the Soft Boys in the late 1970s and releasing the influential Underwater Moonlight, in June 1980,[1] Hitchcock launched a prolific solo career.
Hitchcock's earliest lyrics mined a rich vein of English surrealist comic tradition and tended to depict a particular type of eccentric and sardonic English worldview. His music and performance style was influenced by Bob Dylan, and by the English folk music revival of the 1960s and early 1970s. This was soon filtered through a then-unfashionable psychedelic rock lens during the punk rock and new wave music eras of the late 1970s and early 1980s.[2] This combination of musical styles won Hitchcock's band of the time, The Soft Boys, an enthusiastic if small fanbase. However, the Soft Boys' final album together, Underwater Moonlight, posthumously earned them a glowing reputation (particularly in America) as a major influence on bands like R.E.M.
After finding a measure of success in the latter 1980s in America, Hitchcock's lyrical and musical horizons broadened further to encompass a range of approaches while still retaining a recognisably surreal, but more serious, signature style. He has recorded for two major American labels (A&M Records, then Warner Bros.) over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, and was the subject of a live performance/documentary film (Storefront Hitchcock) by major motion picture director Jonathan Demme in 1998. Since the turn of the millennium he has also finally received belated critical recognition in his home country. Despite this, mainstream success remains limited. He continues to tour and record prolifically and has earned strong critical reviews over a steady stream of album releases and live performances, and a dedicated "cult following"[3] for his unique body of work.
- ^ Holdship, Bill (13 March 2001). "The Soft Boys: Underwater Moonlight". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2 October 2007. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
- ^ "The Top 100 Albums of the 1980s". Pitchfork. 21 November 2002. p. 4. Retrieved 5 February 2023.
- ^ Trager, Oliver (4 December 1997). The American Book of the Dead. Simon and Schuster. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-684-81402-5.
Hitchcock developed a sizable cult following on the heels of the critical acclaim he received in the mid-1980s for his highly poetic, if somewhat obscure, songs.