Michael Bolton - The Essential (Greatest Hits) 2002 [FLAC] [h33t] - Kitlope

Michael Bolton (born Michael Bolotin, February 26, 1953)[1] is an American singer-songwriter. A former hard rock singer, Bolton is best known for his soft rock ballads and tenor vocals.

His achievements include selling eight top ten albums, achieving two number one singles on the Billboard charts, and receiving awards from both the American Music Awards and Grammy Awards.

Michael Bolton was born to Russian Jewish parents George and Helen Bolotin in New Haven, Connecticut. His parents were divorced when he was very young and his father died when Michael was only 13 years old.

The couple had three children, two sons and a daughter.[1] Michael has a brother, Orrin and a sister, Sandra, both older.

His original last name was "Bolotin". The surname has a Russian origin and he changed it at the beginning of the 1980s because people found difficult to pronounce it well and, perhaps, “Bolton” sounded better

Bolton began recording in 1975. This first album was self-titled using his original surname, Bolotin. Early in his musical career, he focused on hard rock. His band, Blackjack, once toured with heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne.

Michael gained his first major hit as a songwriter, co-writing "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" for Laura Branigan, previously best-known for singing the pop hit "Gloria". Narrowly missing the Top 10 on the US pop chart, Branigan took the song to number one on the Adult Contemporary chart for three weeks in 1983. The two sought to work with each other again, and their next collaboration was when Bolton co-wrote "I Found Someone" for Branigan in 1985. Her version was only a minor hit, but two years later, Cher resurrected the song, and with it her own singing career. Bolton co-wrote several other songs for both singers.

Bolton would achieve his greatest success in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a singer in the adult contemporary/easy listening genre. One of his first major hits was his 1987 interpretation of the Otis Redding classic, "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay." Always interested in soul and Motown classics, Bolton's success with that song encouraged him to tackle the standard "Georgia On My Mind," with which he had another hit. In 1991, Bolton released the album Time, Love & Tenderness which featured his Grammy Award winning cover version of "When a Man Loves a Woman".[4]

Most of Bolton's recordings are original material; however, he has also written songs for such artists as Conway Twitty, Barbra Streisand, Kiss, Kenny Rogers, Kenny G, Peabo Bryson and Patti LaBelle.[citation needed] Bolton's early songwriting collaborators included Doug James and Mark Mangold(with whom he co-wrote and jointly composed "I Found Someone"), and as his fame grew, he began to cowrite with higher-profile writers such as BabyFace, Diane Warren, and Bob Dylan.[citation needed]

As a singer, he has performed with Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, Tony Cetinski, Lucia Aliberti, Renée Fleming, Zucchero, Patti LaBelle, Céline Dion, Ray Charles, Percy Sledge, Wynonna Judd, and BB King.[citation needed]

Bolton's last Top 40 single in the US in his own right was the 1997 hit "Go the Distance" (featured in the Walt Disney motion picture Hercules), which peaked at #1 on the US adult contemporary chart. He hired conductor Larry Baird (orchestral musical director/conductor/arranger for The Moody Blues, Three Dog Night, Al Jarreau, etc.) for his 2001 tour.

In 2006 Bolton and his then fiancee Nicollette Sheridan sang a duet, "The Second Time Around," for the album Bolton Swings Sinatra. In March 2007, Bolton toured South Africa for the first time. He was the headline act at Jacaranda 94.2 FM's two day concert. For Over the Rainbow, an album which was recorded in five days, Bolton recorded the song "New York, New York" (also on his Bolton Swings Sinatra album). This was for an episode of the TV series, Challenge Anneka. The proceeds from the album went to children's hospices across the UK.

Bolton performed a duet entitled "Il Mio Amico" with the Italian singer Anna Tatangelo at the Sanremo Music Festival 2008. The song was originally sung by Tatangelo alone, but the duet version contained English lyrics as well. It is a song about the difficulties of being gay in Italy, written by Tatangelo's partner, Gigi D'Alessio