LONDON (Reuters) – Lockdown provided singer Matt Goss the break from live performance that his body needed and the chance to write an album, which he hopes will take him back on a world tour.
The British-born musician, who found fame with his twin brother Luke Goss in the late 1980s, has spent the last decade performing in Las Vegas.
Until the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, he was doing around 120 shows a year in Vegas, and says he knew he “was becoming fatigued … vocally as a musician and mentally.”
So the unexpected time off was not wholly unwelcome.
“I think that it was in a weird way exactly what my body needed and what my mind needed,” he told Reuters at The Dorchester hotel in London during a visit this month.
While he was holed up at home in the United States, Goss said he had time to grieve the loss of his mum in 2014 and write a new album, ‘The Beautiful Unknown’.
“It’s a phrase I use a lot in my poetry … because I think inherently we have been programmed to actually fear tomorrow and … the years ahead … I just want to live in a place where the unknown is a beautiful thing.”
Known for hits such as ‘When Will I Be Famous’, Goss and his twin brother’s band Bros split in 1992, reforming briefly 25 years later.
“My brother loves it (the new album), he thinks it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” Goss said.
“I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done … it genuinely competes with the big hits that I had before.
“I want to see the world. And I think this album is … starting to open up territories I’ve dreamt of going back to,” he said, explaining he had to write the pop record of his life to see cities such as Tokyo, Paris and London.
Goss says he’s inspired by the likes of Mick Jagger, Tony Bennett and David Bowie and that “music is part of (his) DNA” and something he’ll never stop doing.
‘The Beautiful Unknown’ is set for release in February 2022, while the new single ‘Somewhere To Fall’ is out now.
(Reporting by Sarah Mills; Editing by Susan Fenton)
