Rick Springfield and Stranger

With a tumultuous childhood spent in both Australia and England due to his father’s military stationing, Springfield’s musical history began in a number of local rock bands. The singer was invited to join the group Rockhouse in 1968, which changed its name to MPD Ltd, and later joined the pink satin clad group Zoot. A favourite among mainly young teens, Zoot became one of the most popular Australian groups until 1971 when the band broke up.

Springfield then went solo and earned his first major hit with “Speak to the Sky” however was followed by a period of stagnation, thus the singer turned his hand to acting. In 1981 Springfield was awarded the role of Dr. Noah Drake on the TV show General Hospital, catapulting him to stardom and paving the way for his debut album on RCA “Working Class Dog”. Featuring the singles “Jessie’s Girl” and “I’ve Done Everything for You” the album rocketed to chart success and earned the singer a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.

The singer’s subsequent album “Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet” was released the year after in 1982 aided by the hit single “Don’t Talk to Strangers”. 1983’s “Living in Oz” repeated the tried-and-tested pop release again to much the same results, the album peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 and spawned the Top 10 single “Affair of the Heart”.

Springfield made his big screen debut in the 1984 film “Hard to Hold”, which the singer wrote much of the soundtrack for, and which resulted in Springfield’s last Top 10 hit with the single “Love Somebody”. The singer-songwriter went on to release a string of new albums including 1999’s “Karma”, 2004’s “Shock/Denial/Anger/Acceptance”, 2005’s “Day After Yesterday”, 2007’s “Christmas with You” and 2008’s “Venus in Overdrive”, all of which failed to live up to the singer’s earlier releases. In 2012 he signed with Universal’s Hip-O label through which he released the album “For the End of the World”.