in 1990, Hart scored nine top-40 hits in the United States. For him, pop-music success meant American pop-music success – a goal he chased relentlessly.,” Hart says, sitting across from me in a hotel ballroom, referring to a popular syndicated radio countdown show from the past. “That was my religion, my church-going on weekends. I’d memorize that list. I’d read Billboard magazine. That was my dream, to sing and write songs and be there on that countdown.
Outside of Quebec, which had its own ecosystem, made-in-Canada stars were the exceptions, not the rule. “When a Canadian artist did not have an American deal, it was tough,” says Hart, fit and full of earnest arm tattoos at 56. “My goal was beyond Canada.” Hart admits some of his earliest songs were “puerile and juvenile.” Raised by a single mother, the songs he wrote by the hundreds as a teen were often emotional reactions to the way a husband had wrongly treated a wife. The song was about the cheating and duplicity he witnessed both at home and within the record industry. With no girlfriend of his own, Hart wrote about young romances he could only envision. The songis about a breakup that ends with the girl getting custody of the wireless.
Blessed with natural good looks and a talent for pop hooks, Hart left nothing to chance and left no record-industry contact unturned. As a teen, he worked with Paul Anka. In 1980, as an unsigned artist, he had his manager send a tape of his songs to the World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo.
While playing his songs in the studio, Hart saw Cross in the control room enthusiastically speaking with the recording engineer. “He seemed to be excited about what I was playing,” Hart recalls. After Cross wished the upstart songster well with his career and departed, Hart asked the engineer if Cross had liked what he was hearing. Turns out the sound in the control room was turned down; Cross and the engineer were talking about the football game or something else. “I was devastated,” Hart says.
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