Stephen Cummings Announces 20th Solo Album 'Prisoner Of Love'

From The Sports to a remarkable solo career, Stephen Cummings is one of Australia's most loved and respected singers and songwriters.

Today, Bloodlines is proud to announce the release of Stephen's 20th solo album - Prisoner Of Love - out on Friday 22 February 2019, his first in five years.

"Long ago, I worked out I was good at dealing with the perpetual confusion between the sexes, and I haven't strayed too far from this," Stephen says, explaining the Prisoner Of Love title. "Basically, for every step forward there is a step backwards, and sideways too."

Prisoner Of Love will be followed by the release of the long awaited career anthology A Life Is A Life, which showcases 50 tracks from across Stephen Cummings' indelible solo career on a Deluxe 4CD Set with 60 page booklet (*25 Tracks on Double Vinyl). Each copy of this strictly limited release will be signed and numbered by Stephen.

RocKwiz's Brian Nankervis calls Stephen's solo records "timeless, moving, funny and utterly unique".

Screenwriter and playwright Matt Cameron (Jack Irish, the Molly mini-series) describes Stephen as "an urban poet: fragile, fearless, conjuring bittersweet beauty out of dark nights of the soul".

And as Bernard Zuel wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald: "He is easily one of our greatest storytellers, capable of creating lives in miniature."

Stephen's songs have been covered by artists far and wide including Jimmy Little, The Whitlams, Vika & Linda Bull and Weddings, Parties, Anything, and he has collaborated with the Australian Dance Theatre.

He has also written two acclaimed novels, Wonderboy and Stay Away From Lightning Girl, and an unforgettable memoir, Will It Be Funny Tomorrow, Billy? ('often hilarious if occasionally uncomfortable' according to The Sydney Morning Herald).

And Stephen was the subject of the documentary Don't Throw Stones, which premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2014.

Stephen is excited to be taking the new album and his extensive catalogue on the road in April & May though there is some speculation that this could be his final go 'round. "That will almost do it for me." The ARIA Award-winning artist continues "I must have written upward of five or six hundred songs and that seems more than enough."

But Prisoner Of Love shows there's a lot of life left in Stephen, who released his first solo album in 1984. It crackles with a vitality that artists half his age would love to have. It's a tight and concise 10 tracks, though it's loaded with wry observations on life, love and pain. "What seems painful can pay big dividends," Stephen reflects in the album's opening cut, 'Life Moves On'.

Stephen made Prisoner Of Love with The Ferrets' Billy Miller. "I couldn't have made the album without him," Stephen notes. A Mushroom contemporary from the late '70s, Billy also produced Stephen's 2009 album, Tickety Boo and 2012's Reverse Psychology.

Prisoner Of Love also sees Stephen reunited with Michael Gudinski's Mushroom Group - where he found fame fronting The Sports at the end of the '70s.

"There is something to be said for local expertise," Stephen says. "My recording career began with Mushroom and Michael, and in these mystifying times, the Bloodlines label (Mushroom) and Michael seems like the right place to be. I am rapt to have all my songs and recordings in the one place."

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