Rolling Stone once declared Peter Bruntnell to be, ‘one of England’s best kept musical secrets’. England has successfully managed to keep Peter Bruntnell a secret for all this time, even from itself.
‘Maybe this will be the album to finally give him the worldwide superstar recognition he deserves!’, enthused every other Peter Bruntnell album review from the last 20+ years, with an admirably unwavering optimism.
“If we lived in a just world, Peter Bruntnell would by now be in the middle of his third or fourth global arena tour, his biggest worry working out how to courier his latest armful of Grammy awards back to the UK so his butler could have them installed in the west wing of mansion by the time he got home,” said a feature in The Guardian in 2016, intent on letting the cat out of the bag, but failing miserably.
Needless to say, we don’t live in a just world and Peter Bruntnell is still having to get by without a butler. Although perhaps the curriculum is to blame for this failure to ignite mass awareness, with not one teacher in the past two decades known to have heeded the call from NME to teach Peter’s songs in schools.
Peter’s 2021 album, Journey To The Sun, did little to dispel this fantasy of world domination. The Scottish Daily Express understandably stated that they too were ‘getting tired of saying this: He’s brilliant’ and dished out a full set of stars.
A national tabloid newspaper with an uncharacteristically decent, albeit it very small, album reviews section was surprisingly on the mark in saying: “He is Britain’s best kept secret for whom the word ‘underappreciated’ was surely invented”. Five more stars from them. Mojo continued very much along the same lines with: “Somehow, some way, this cult and infinitely class songwriter must get his due wider recognition”. He still hasn’t.
Peter is preparing to pick up a fresh new batch of identical press quotes upon the release of his new album, Houdini And The Sucker Punch in 2024.
