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Matt Cardle
Cardle in Stockport promoting the release of The Fire.
Matthew Sheridan "Matt" Cardle (born 15 April 1983) is an English singer-songwriter who won the seventh series of The X Factor in 2010. He received a £1 million recording contract with Syco Music for winning.
Early life
Cardle was born in Southampton, Hampshire, to David and Jennifer Cardle (née Horner) on 15 April 1983. He has an older brother called Dominic with whom he has a close relationship. His family lived in Bristol before moving to Essex. At age two he was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer and had a kidney removed. He started playing guitar and writing songs at aged 11 and knew from that point that music was what he wanted to do with his life. At this time he also started singing lessons but stopped going after missing a class. He attended a summer band camp through his teens and played in bands. He attended the independent Stoke College in Suffolk, then studied a music course at the Institute in Colchester. He then went on to do a media course at Braintree College. Cardle is a keen skateboarder and spent a lot of his college years at skate parks instead of studying and therefore felt that education wasn't the right path for him.
In 2005 he was a member of the alternative rock / pop band Darwyn and recorded an 11 track album "When You Wake" and the follow-up EP "Little Sunlight" in 2006.
In 2009, he became the frontman and guitarist of a rock band called Seven Summers. They performed live on Sue Marchant's BBC radio program on 8 December 2009 and released a self-titled album on 22 January 2010.
In 2010, Cardle auditioned for the seventh series of The X Factor, singing Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good". His mentor was Dannii Minogue, who mentored him until the final when he was announced the winner on 12 December 2010, after receiving 44.61% of the vote. Cardle received the most votes every week from week 2, being beaten only by Mary Byrne in week 1. The week after the series final, Cardle's cover version of "Many of Horror" originally recorded by Scottish rock trio Biffy Clyro and retitled as "When We Collide", topped the UK Singles Chart to become the 2010 Christmas number 1 and remained there for three consecutive weeks. The song was nominated in the Best British Single category at the 2011 BRIT Awards. In June 2012 the song reached the one million sale mark, making it the 123rd single to sell a million copies in the UK and the fourth by an X Factor contestant.
On 15 March 2011, it was reported that Cardle has signed a record deal with Syco Music in a joint venture with Columbia Records, becoming the first The X Factor winner not to be exclusively signed to Simon Cowell's label.
On 18 August 2011, Cardle revealed that his debut album, Letters, would be released in the UK on 17 October 2011. Whilst working on the album Cardle collaborated with various writers including Eg White and James Walsh.
The album's first single, "Run For Your Life," written by Gary Barlow, peaked at number 6 on the UK Top 40 Chart. In an interview published on 11 August, Cardle praised Barlow as a "genius" and said that he could not pass the song up: “I’d been trying to write a song like that for a long, long time, probably five or six years. As soon as I heard it I just felt the song was mine.... I was nearly in tears recording the vocals.” Letters was released on 17 October and debuted at number 2 on the UK Albums chart. The album spent 16 consecutive weeks in the top 40.
A second single, "Starlight", was released on 4 December 2011. Though rated more highly than Run For Your Life by some fans and online bloggers, it sold poorly, charting for one week only at number 185 on the UK singles chart.
The third and final single to be released from "Letters," Amazing, was released as an EP, containing a new track called "All Is Said", which Cardle wrote with James Walsh, a new recording of "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and a live version of the album track "Slowly."
In February 2012 he embarked on the Letters Tour. The tour ended on 29 March 2012 at Hammersmith Apollo. In September 2012 Matt said this was his favourite gig so far in his career.
On 20 May 2012 Cardle announced on Twitter that he had "parted ways" with Columbia Records. On 9 September 2012, So What Recordings, part of the Silva Screen Music Group, announced that Cardle's second album, "The Fire" would be released on 29 October 2012 on their label.
On 11 September 2012, the lead single, It's Only Love was released online on Cardle's YouTube channel as an audio only video. It peaked at number 175 on the UK Singles Chart. The Fire debuted at number 8 in the UK album chart, giving Cardle his second top 10 album. It dropped twenty places the following week and left the Top 100 in December.
During promotion for the album, Cardle reversed his previously stated enthusiasm for the single "Run For Your Life" and claimed that he never liked the song. He asserted that "The Fire" was more like what he did before The X Factor than "Letters": "I’m getting closer to myself, and getting back to what I do and what I’ve always done."
On 15 November 2012 Cardle appeared at the Christmas light switch-on at Merseyway Shopping Centre in Stockport, where he was second-billed to the pop group Steps. On 10 December an Unplugged tour was announced on Cardle's website. Tickets went on general sale on 12 December.
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Cardle in Stockport promoting the release of The Fire.
