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Home | Musical Artists | Cliff Richard
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With his backing group The Shadows, Richard, originally positioned as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the Elvis Presley style, dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s and early 1960s. His 1958 hit single "Move It" is often described as Britain's first authentic rock and roll song, and John Lennon once claimed that "before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music." A conversion to Christianity and subsequent softening of his music later led to a more middle of the road pop image, sometimes venturing into gospel. Over a 52-year career, Cliff Richard has become a fixture of the British entertainment world. He has amassed hundreds of gold and platinum discs and awards, including three Brit awards and two Ivor Novello awards, making him one of the most successful singers of all time. He has had more than 130 singles, albums and EPs make the UK Top 20, more than any other artist. He holds the record (with Elvis Presley) as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first sex decades (1950s � 2000s). He has achieved 14 UK number one singles (or 18, depending on the counting methodology) and is the only singer to have had a number one single in the UK in five consecutive decades: the 1950s through to the 1990s (discounting digital downloads and counting only CDs, he also had a UK number one single in the 2000s). He is the biggest selling singles artist of all time in the UK, with total sales of over 27 million and UK album sales of over 18 million. In his spare time, Sir Cliff Richard is an amateur dirt bike jumper, and is planning to take part in a competition in 2011 . Richard has never achieved the same impact in the United States despite eight US Top 40 singles, three of which peaked in the Top 10, including the million selling "Devil Woman" and "We Don't Talk Anymore" (with the latter, becoming the first act to reach the Hot 100's top 40 in the 1980s who had also been in that chart's top 40 in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s). In the USA his singles sales stand at around 10 million while his album sales are about 5 million. In Canada Cliff achieved moderate success in the 1980s with a couple of albums gaining platinum status, he has sold around 2 million records there. He has remained a popular music, film, and television personality in Australia (where he has sold more than 5 million records), New Zealand, South Africa, Europe (especially in Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland and Belgium) and Asia (especially Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong), and he retains a following in other countries also. He has sold more than 260 million records worldwide. |
