“Beautiful Day” found David Essex looking forward, not simply back
By the time David Essex released “Beautiful Day” in 2006, the world that had first made him a household name was already several decades behind him. Yet the song carries an important clue to why his career lasted so long: Essex was still writing, recording and performing new material rather than relying entirely on “Rock On,” “Gonna Make You a Star” or “Hold Me Close.” “Beautiful Day” was the opening track and title song of his 2006 album, released on 28 September 2006, a ten-track collection that also included “Dust to Dust,” “In Our Sky,” “Time Is On Our Side” and “Blue Without You.”
There is something rather touching about that chapter of Essex’s career. He had already experienced almost every side of show business imaginable. His breakthrough came in 1973, when That’ll Be the Day, Godspell and “Rock On” converged in an extraordinary period that established him simultaneously as a singer, actor and stage performer. “Rock On” became an international success, while “Gonna Make You a Star” reached No.1 in Britain in 1974 and “Hold Me Close” followed with another UK No.1 in 1975. By 2006, however, Essex was no longer trying to prove that he could become a star. He was writing from the perspective of someone who had already lived through fame, theatre, film, touring and the strange passage of time that comes with all of them.
The timing of the album is revealing too. Essex had an unusually busy 2006. His Greatest Hits album went Gold, he appeared in the West End production of “Footloose” from May to September, and then released Beautiful Day through his own website to coincide with a 48-date UK tour. That combination says a great deal about his approach. The new album was not presented as a replacement for the songs people already loved. Instead, it existed alongside them. A contemporary review of his November 2006 Shepherd’s Bush Empire concert noted that much of the evening came from Beautiful Day and his other recent albums, rather than being simply a greatest-hits performance. The same review remarked that Essex still possessed the familiar smile, expressive eyes and an effective voice, while the audience remained deeply connected to the older material.
That balance became one of the most appealing things about “Beautiful Day.” It belongs to the mature David Essex rather than the young heart-throb surrounded by the hysteria of “Essex Mania.” The song therefore carries a different kind of emotional weight when heard beside his 1970s catalogue. There is no need for the young rebel of “Rock On” to return. There is no need to recreate the atmosphere of 1975. Instead, the song sits within a later body of work in which Essex was still looking for new melodies, new stories and new ways to communicate with an audience that had grown older alongside him. The album itself runs for just over 37 minutes, with ten original tracks, making it feel more like a personal collection of contemporary songs than a nostalgic exercise.
And perhaps that is why “Beautiful Day” has an interesting place in the David Essex story. It reminds us that the man associated so strongly with the golden glow of the 1970s never really belonged only to that decade. He continued writing albums through the 1990s and 2000s, continued acting and touring, and even brought “Beautiful Day” into his live repertoire. An official release of “Beautiful Day (Live)” later appeared from the I’ll Be Missing You Tour (The Final Show), recorded in the later chapter of his touring career and released in 2017.
Hearing the song now, its title seems almost perfectly suited to the man behind it. David Essex had already known the dizzying heights of pop stardom, the pressure of the stage, the cameras, the screaming audiences and the inevitable changes that time brings. Yet in 2006 he was still stepping onto a stage with a new album under his arm. “Beautiful Day” was not an attempt to turn the clock back. It was David Essex continuing to move forward, carrying all those earlier years with him without allowing them to become the only story worth telling.