Hugh Goldsmith is a music industry executive from London, England. After leaving his role as managing director of

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic R ...

in the UK, he founded

Innocent Records Innocent Records was a pop record label created to cater to for EMI's Virgin Records more pop oriented acts. Following the success of the Spice Girls, Virgin Records decided to delve into the pop market. In doing so they poached Hugh Golds ...

Career

Prior to joining RCA Records as marketing director in 1992, Goldsmith had been a full-time musician and songwriter, and had also worked in the advertising and publishing industries. According to a ''Financial Times'' article by Sathnam Sanghera, Goldsmith made “a name for himself by helping to break

Take That Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer ...

”. Goldsmith was promoted to the position of Managing Director of RCA Records UK in 1995. Significant artists who Goldsmith worked with during his time at RCA included

Annie Lennox Ann Lennox (born 25 December 1954) is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving moderate success in the late 1970s as part of the new wave band the Tourists, she and fellow musician Dave Stewart w ...

, Take That,

M People M People (stylised as ''M''People) are an English dance music band that formed in 1990 and achieved success throughout most of the 1990s. The name M People is derived from the first letter of the first name of band member Mike Pickering, who f ...

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...

Kylie Minogue Kylie Ann Minogue (; born 28 May 1968) is an Australian singer, songwriter, and actress. Frequently referred to as the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Princess of Pop", she has achieved recognition in both the music industry and fas ...

, Robson and Jerome, Five and

Natalie Imbruglia Natalie Jane Imbruglia ( , ; born 4 February 1975) is an Australian and British singer and actress. Born and raised in New South Wales, Imbruglia became widely known in the early 1990s playing Beth Brennan in the soap opera ''Neighbours''. A ...

. In 1997, Goldsmith was hired by Virgin Records' president Paul Conroy, and was tasked with launching and heading up a new pop label. The resulting label, Innocent Records, launched the music careers of

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

Atomic Kitten Atomic Kitten were an English girl group formed in Liverpool in 1998, whose original lineup comprised Kerry Katona, Liz McClarnon, and Natasha Hamilton. The group was founded by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) members Andy McCluskey an ...

Billie Piper Billie Paul Piper (born Leian Paul Piper; 22 September 1982) is an English actress and former singer who is best known for her portrayal as Rose Tyler in ''Doctor Who'' (2005–2006, 2008, 2010). She initially gained recognition as a singer a ...

and

Martine McCutcheon Martine Kimberley Sherrie McCutcheon (formerly Ponting, born 14 May 1976) is an English actress and singer. She began appearing in television commercials at an early age and made her television debut in the children's television drama '' Bluebir ...

. During Goldsmith's time at Innocent Records, its artists achieved 10 UK number 1 singles and five UK number 1 albums. In 2002, Goldsmith won the ''

Music Week ''Music Week'' is a trade publication for the UK record industry distributed via a website and a monthly print magazine. It is published by Future. History Founded in 1959 as ''Record Retailer'', it relaunched on 18 March 1972 as ''Music We ...

'' A&R award. Goldsmith started a new joint venture label with Sony BMG in 2004 called Brightside Recordings which also housed indie label Ugly Truth. Brightside saw Goldsmith reunite with Imbruglia following their initial working relationship at RCA in 1997. Her single " Shiver" went on to become Britain's most broadcast track in 2005. Other acts signed to Brightside/Ugly Truth included

Rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl (''Gallus gallus''), originally native to Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is now one of the most common and w ...

and

Newton Faulkner Sam Newton Battenberg Faulkner (born 11 January 1985) is an English singer-songwriter and musician from Reigate, Surrey. He is known for his percussive style of guitar playing. In 2007 Faulkner's debut studio album ''Hand Built by Robots'' was ce ...

. Goldsmith left Brightside in 2009 to set up an independent publishing and production company called Hotspring Music. In 2015, Goldsmith was brought in by the BBC as a music consultant to help find the songs and acts to represent the at the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest. Goldsmith returned to perform the same role for the 2017 and 2018 competitions.

Songwriting credits

Writing under the pseudonym, Ian Hope or I. Hope, Goldsmith has co-written several songs recorded by Blue. These include " If You Come Back", which peaked at number 1 in the UK, plus "Long Time" and "Back To You" from Blue’s debut album, '' All Rise''. A decade later he re-teamed with Blue to co-write their Eurovision song contest entry, " I Can". In 2022, Goldsmith reunited with Blue again, A&R-ing and executive producing their sixth album, '' Heart and Soul''. He also co-wrote that album’s "Let’s Get Sad".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldsmith, Hugh Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Businesspeople from London English male songwriters British music industry executives RCA Records