Joe Cross
In the few short years that Joe has been focusing on his production career, he has made a real impact and had some stunning successes. As the main writer and producer of the fantastic electro pop act Performance, Big Life’s association with Joe has been long and successful. But his reputation as a fantastic top line writer and track producer, has begun to open many doors for him and lead to his involvement in some very exciting projects.
Key amongst these has been his involvement with Hurts. The lads from the band have always been big Performance fans, and as both acts hailed from Manchester, it was an obvious choice that they would approach Joe to collaborate on their debut album “Happiness”. Joe had a massive impact on the album and co-write and co produced not only the key singles “Better Than Love” and “Wonderful Life”, but also the album title track “Happiness”. The album on release went Top 5 in the UK and Top 10 in many European countries including Greece, Germany, Austria, Finland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Poland. It has achieved Platinum sales in Germany and Poland and gold sales in the UK , Russia and Austria.
Off the back of this success, Universal signed electronic act The Sound of Arrows enlisted Joe for his co-writing and production skills on their eagerly awaited forthcoming album. Over various trans-European collaborations, of the resulting tracks ‘Nova’ is slated to be the band’s first major release and ‘After The Silence’, amongst the strongest on the record.
Joe is hugely respected in Manchester and much of his early production work stems from working with the city’s freshest new talent. This includes the much hyped band The Heartbreaks, a recent NME/ radar featured act and Uproar coverstars. The band’s first single produced and mixed by Joe was hailed everywhere from the NME to Steve Lamacq, called ‘achingly beautiful’ by the Independent and the ‘hottest download’ by the Sunday Times. Joe has recently produced another three tracks for the band’s debut album.
In 2010 Joe also had a writing session with the Moshi Moshi/ Island signed act Cock’n’Bull Kid and it produced an out of the box smash! Album producer Liam Howe and Joe co produced the track “One Eye Open” and the result is a stormer of an electro pop record that went on to be the artists’ first single from the critically acclaimed “Adulthood” album. Such is his strength as a songwriter that he has also recently completed writing session with the hot tipped Hero, Kenzio, American artist Tom Andrews, German band Livingstone, and most recently with hugely successful dance producer Alex Metric.
2011 has already been a hugely successful year for Joe. Performance have resigned to BMG in Germany and Joe and Co have been busy writing and producing their album for release in this territory later in the year. The have toured extensively throughout Europe with Human League and have begun playing select European festivities over the summer.
But Joe also found the time to produce and write with many new and exciting electronic acts. The success of the Hurts album in Germany especially has meant that Joe has been in hot demand in that territory as a writer / producer and has been invited to some exciting writer camps over there. So far this year he has written and produced singles for a host of established acts and some new exciting talent. Foremost amongst these is Thomas Azier. In only a handful of days in Joe’s studio, the pair have written a smash single that has already seen much interest in the film sync world and will be a key track for the artist’s forthcoming album. Joe and Thomas are scheduled to write together early in the new year.
Also this year Joe has also written and produced a single for the German band Livingstone, remixed Firefoxx for Sony Germany, written the German acts Strify and Die Orsons and recently written with Johhny from Zoot Woman for a Stewart Price produced album later in the year. He is continuing his collaborations with Stefan Storm from The Sound of Arrows and had successful writing session with Lana del Ray and Liam Howe earlier in the year. He has also recently been in the studio writing with the hotly tipped American acts Mikki Ekko and Tom Andrews.
Joe recently produced the debut album from London band Wheels and is currently producing and mixing the forthcoming Courtneers album.
Discography
| Title | Artist | Label | Credit |
| Better Than Love/Wonderful Life | Hurts | Sony | Co Wrote/Produced |
| Forthcoming Album | The Courteeners | TBC | Produced/Mixed |
| Forthcoming Album | Wheels | TBC | Produced/Mixed |
| Forthcoming Tracks | Thomas Azier | Universal | Co Wrote/Produced |
| Wildfire | Tom Andrews | Interscope | Co Wrote/Produced |
| Forthcoming Tracks | Mikki Ekko | Red Bull | Co Wrote |
| Forthcoming Track | Zoot Woman | WoS | Co Wrote |
| Perfect Dream | Livingstone | Universal | Co Wrote/Produced/Mixed |
| A Language | Performance | BMG | Co Wrote/Produced/Mixed |
| Red Brick Heart | Performance | Too Much Info | Co Wrote/Produced/Mixed |
| We Are Performance | Performance | Too Much Info | Co Wrote/Produced/Mixed |
| Forthcoming Tracks | The Heartbreaks | PIAS | Produced |
| One Eye Open | Cocknbullkid | Island | Co Wrote/Produced |
| Ur My Girl | Kiss In Cities | TBC | Produced/Mixed |
| Forthcoming Tracks | Techniques | TBC | Produced/Mixed |
| Forthcoming Tracks | Hero | TBC | Co Wrote/Produced/Mixed |
▶ Hurts | Wonderful Life