CHRIS De Burgh has been announced the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award winner ahead of The Irish Post Awards later this month.
The Wexford-raised international music star will play an exclusive performance on the night when live coverage of the Awards kicks off on TG4 next Thursday, November 22 at 9.30pm.
"I am thrilled and delighted to have been honoured with The Irish Post's Lifetime Achievement Award 2018," says Chris.
"I would like to thank all those colleagues and fans from all over the world who have supported and encouraged me during my career of more than 44 years, and of course, many thanks to The Irish Post for this prestigious honour."
Few artists can lay claim to international success spanning three decades but, beginning with his very first release, De Burgh has achieved precisely that.
The foundations of a remarkable and durable career were laid back in 1975 with the release of his debut album, ‘Far Beyond These Castle Walls’, featuring the single, ‘Flying’, which spent 17 weeks at No. 1 in Brazil.
Subsequent records, almost in turn, continued to steadily draw in audiences around the world – from Scandinavia to South Africa, and from the United Kingdom to the United States.
By 1980, Chris’s global profile had already mushroomed to the point where that year’s album, ‘Eastern Wind’, became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time in Norway.
A year later, its follow-up, ‘Man On The Line’, was a Top 30 album in the UK, the US and 20 other countries, while producing the single ‘High On Emotion’, which went to No. 1 in ten European countries.
In many respects, it was this record that opened the door to the enormous success which was to follow, and scale new heights with the arrival of Chris’s 1986 album ‘Into The Light’.
The album featured the song which finally established him as a known singer-songwriter around the world. ‘The Lady In Red’, now undeniably an evergreen classic, achieved No. 1 status in 25 countries, including the UK, went to No. 2 in America – and has now sold in excess of 8 million copies.
To this day, it remains one of the most played songs on the planet and catapulted Chris to superstar status around the globe – particularly in Germany, where his sell-out tours have grossed more than any other artist on the road in multiple years.
In 1990, Chris’s German popularity helped him become the only international artist personally invited to perform at the historic public celebrations marking the re-unification of East and West Germany.
In the many successful years since, Chris has continued to add new audiences to his vast fan base – from Moscow to Malta, from Singapore to Sarajevo – and has sold over 45 million albums worldwide.
Always looking to find and embrace new challenges for himself as a musician and a performer, no one in the business is quite a match for the blouson-clad balladeer De Burgh.
The Irish Post Awards 2018 is sponsored by DRS Bond Management, Invennt & PHD Modular Access
Tune into The Irish Post Awards 2018 on Thursday, November 22 at 9.30pm LIVE on TG4!
