I Am What I Am by John Barrowman (white hot kiss .TXT) 📕

track, as it has established itself as one of the signature songs of the album. Tim Rice, the song’s lyricist, loved the fact that the duet became a poignant ‘gay anthem’ – a point he made to me in a note he sent prior to a concert we both participated in at Truro Cathedral.

My favourite accolade about this song, though, came in an email from a young Australian man, who was coming to terms with being gay. He wrote that when he heard this version of the song, it made him realize that he wanted some day to know what that kind of love and passion between two men feels like.

When I hear from fans about how much a particular song has meant to them, I’m always moved and touched; and when I hear from the song’s writer, like Tim Rice, or more recently Barry Manilow, I’m very chuffed indeed. I’ve been a fan of Barry Manilow’s music for decades, and I’ve included his work in my concerts and cabaret for years. For Music Music Music, I recorded Barry’s song ‘I Made It Through the Rain’.

One morning, when I was a guest on The Chris Moyles Show on BBC Radio 1, Chris, in his usual, slightly mocking, tongue-placed-firmly-in-cheek mode, encouraged all his listeners to download this particular track from iTunes. Guess what? The result was that the song zoomed into the charts, which was amazing, given that the album had been released eight whole months before. The song actually got as high as number five on iTunes downloads, and then settled at number fourteen for a couple of weeks.22

If that wasn’t incredible enough, a few days later I heard from the man who wrote the song himself. Barry was so thrilled with my cover of this song, and the fact that it had leapt into the charts again, that he called me while I was in the US filming my segment of ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ for Children in Need. He invited me to lunch with him in Palm Springs, but unfortunately I wasn’t available.23 Instead, we had a long chat – and he invited me to join him onstage, to duet on the number, when he performed at the Proms in the Park concert in London’s Hyde Park.24

Creating albums isn’t just about the individual songs, it’s also about the CD’s overall style and sound. With Another Side, I wanted glossy and showy, but with Music Music Music, I wanted a more down-to-earth and personal approach. I know a lot of people didn’t like the cover of Music Music Music – which shows me in profile, in a relaxed, informal pose, looking down and laughing – Sony especially. They wanted a full picture of the front of my face, and possibly they were right on that.

Whether the look ultimately succeeded or failed, though, at least I had some say in what the cover looked like: that creative input is really important to me. The picture on the inside sleeve, with the ‘three Johns’25 on the theatre seats, was also my idea and I was really pleased that the image worked out so well.

I recorded most of Music Music Music in London and LA. Occasionally, I’d lay down some tracks in a venue that happened to be next door to the studio where Britney Spears was recording her latest album, Circus. When she was there, the studio and the surrounding streets were a circus themselves, with all kinds of characters and photographers crowding the pavements. Sometimes, I’d arrive to record and the facility would be in lockdown, with as many security guards and paparazzi as there were fans.

When I’m singing in the studio, there’s a ‘click’ track going on in my cans,26 kind of like a metronome, helping me to keep time and hold my track line.27 I’m not really sure why, but I found that Music Music Music was a bit more emotional to record. When I’m recording, I’m trying to get across the feelings at the core of a song, and when I was recording ‘From a Distance’ and ‘Both Sides Now’, for example, there were times when I just couldn’t get through the songs without losing it. I’ve heard from other artists that this happens much more when you’re in a studio recording than it may ever happen when you’re singing the song live. I’ve wondered if it’s because you’re in such a confined space, often completely alone, and you’re exposing yourself in a way that can be pretty raw. A few times, I’d have to stop, and then start the ‘click’ track all over again.

Music Music Music had a few hurdles to get over when it was released, and because of them the album did not sell as well as Another Side. One of the biggest was the recession, and Woolworth’s going under. Woolworth’s held a lot of CD stock in their warehouses that didn’t get distributed after they declared bankruptcy, and I wasn’t the only performer caught in this economic situation.

The other hurdle I faced with this second Sony album was that Sony/Epic really wanted me to be a pop singer, and under no circumstances did I ever want to be one. I’ve always aspired to be a singer who puts out an album a year for a wide spectrum of listeners to enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, I can sing pop songs with the best of them, but that’s not the same as creating the persona along with the playlist.

Before recording Music Music Music, I’d been moved from Sony BMG to Sony Epic. Epic produces more of Sony’s pop artists, whereas BMG covers a broader range of genres and artists. Epic decided to release Music Music Music on a day when there were about twenty-two other albums being released. Since I’m not primarily known as a recording artist – unless you were looking for my album specifically, you might not dig around for it – I think that decision also hurt my