Another album you might not know

Eg White's finest fifty-two minutes.

Francis ‘Eg’ White is someone you might describe as a jobbing songwriter, if such a profession exists any more, given the reduced earnings from even international smash hits. White has won three Ivor Novello awards, and written for just about every jobbing British and Antipodean singer of the twenty-first century - Will Young, Natalie Imbruglia, Duffy, Craig David, Sam Smith, Kylie. Pink and Mary J Blige have recorded his songs, as have Linkin Park, Jason Mraz, and Keith Urban. The Brill Building, the offices where Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman and scores of others used to write their early ‘60s classics, doesn’t operate in the same way any longer, but White works in that tradition. Even if you have no interest in any of the artists who have used his services, you must at least admire the craft that went into ‘Chasing Pavements’, the song he wrote for Adele, and as close to mainstream pop-ballad perfection you are likely to find in the twenty-first century.

But in 1991, he made his own record, with Alice Temple, a fashion model and former female BMX champion, the first in the UK and Europe. Unless you have committed to listening to every piece of music made by BMX champions, I cannot imagine that this strange factoid on its own will persuade you to listen to the album, but luckily it has other qualities.

24 years Of Hunger is a minor classic. (It can’t be major because nobody has ever heard of it.) It sounds deeply meant and deeply felt, a singer-songwriter’s album rather than a Brill Building album; it is a folk-soul record in the style of early Hall and Oates, with some twisty melodies occasionally reminiscent of the great Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout, or sometimes even Joni. It bombed, of course, but it’s not just me who loves it. Q magazine named it one of the great pop albums of the twentieth century, although that might be over-eg(g)ing it, and it’s hard to buy a physical copy for under twenty-five quid - it built a cult following that has never gone away. I think the very worst you could say about it is that it’s pleasant, but I think there are some of you who will find a place for it in your soft-rock hearts. Enjoy.