Clive Griffin - Commitment of the Heart (1993)

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Sony’s Next Big Thing of 1993!

A little explanation is in order, I can tell. You’ve never heard of Clive Griffin. (You have heard his voice — probably — but more on that in a minute.) He’s a footnote to a footnote now, but for a few months, Sony’s Epic/550 imprint did everything it could to convince the world that Griffin was a pop star in the making.

The label failed, of course, but before we start mocking them for their failure, let’s pause to acknowledge that records tank all the time, for lots of reasons, and hey, at least Epic put a little effort into promoting this one. And now that we’ve said something nice, let’s point out two things:

1. In making Clive Griffin a priority, Sony was committing millions of dollars to breaking a blue-eyed soul singer in 1993. They weren’t alone in this — various labels¹ released new albums and/or singles from Michael McDonald, Daryl Hall, and Paul Young the same year — but that doesn’t make the decision any less misguided. No one was buying McDonald, Hall, or Young records in ‘93, and those guys had name value.

2. Speaking of names: Pop stars are not named Clive.

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