The Scotsman
Sat 30 Jun 2007

What's happened to Terence Trent D'arby?

THIS YEAR marks the 20th anniversary of Introducing the Hardline
According to Terence Trent D'Arby, one of the most successful debut
albums of the 1980s. It seemed to announce the arrival of a new
Prince - D'Arby, from New York, was not only a charismatic singer
with a voice that evoked Sam Cooke and Smokey Robinson, he wrote and
produced his own records and played most of the instruments himself.
Less endearingly, he was cockier than Razorlight's Johnny Borrell, a
self-absorbed eccentric who proclaimed his own genius at every
opportunity, infamously prancing around in the nude on the cover of
Q magazine.

Introducing the Hardline was a huge hit, however, carried along by
singles such as If You Let Me Stay and Sign Your Name. Then D'Arby,
carried away perhaps by the belief in his own genius, followed it up
with 1989's Neither Fish Nor Flesh, a frequently preposterous
concept album that sold only a sixth as many copies as his debut
(it's all relative, mind; Fish's two million sales are a big success
story in today's terms).

He won back some goodwill with the more mainstream Symphony or Damn
four years later, but the momentum was largely gone, and D'Arby is
now widely forgotten - and, given the quality of much of his work,
arguably deserving of reassessment.

He's still making music, just under most people's radar. In 2001,
inspired by a series of dreams, he changed his name to Sananda
Maitreya, moving to Germany and then to Italy. He now releases his
music via his website, www.sanandamaitreya.com - three albums under
his new name to date.

This article: http://living.scotsman.com/music.cfm?id=1021362007

Last updated: 29-Jun-07 00:36 BST

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