Billy Ocean Tickets

Short Biography
Billy Ocean Greatest Hits Tour

Billy Ocean holds the prestigious title of being the biggest selling British black artist of all time. During a career spanning over 25 years, he has achieved extraordinary worldwide success as an artist and songwriter, selling in excess of 30 million albums and singles and collecting a pile of Gold and Platinum records and International number ones. Now for the first time, the legend Billy Ocean is bringing his Greatest Hits Tour to New Zealand.

Born in Trinidad, Billy moved to London aged eight and soaked up the music of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. His first break came when he sign...

Short Biography
Billy Ocean Greatest Hits Tour

Billy Ocean holds the prestigious title of being the biggest selling British black artist of all time. During a career spanning over 25 years, he has achieved extraordinary worldwide success as an artist and songwriter, selling in excess of 30 million albums and singles and collecting a pile of Gold and Platinum records and International number ones. Now for the first time, the legend Billy Ocean is bringing his Greatest Hits Tour to New Zealand.

Born in Trinidad, Billy moved to London aged eight and soaked up the music of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. His first break came when he signed to GTO Records and his second single Love Really Hurts Without You reached number 2 in the UK charts and number 12 in the US. A further two Top 20 singles followed; Love on Delivery and Stop Me, after which, Billy parted ways with his label. The move to Jive Records provided instant success with the release of the million selling American number one and Grammy winning single Caribbean Queen. Chart hits Loverboy and Suddenly followed and in 1986 Billy released When the Going Gets Tough (the Tough Get Going) - the theme song to the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner/Danny Devito movie Jewel of the Nile.

Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car gave Billy yet another US number 1 and with hits in the USA, Australia, Germany, Holland and the UK, and with a young family at home, Billy decided to take a break. But in 2007 he went back on the road. This culminated in not just a successful tour. Billy started writing and recording again and the resulting album, Because I Love You, was released on February 2nd 2009.

Don't miss this rare opportunity to see Billy Ocean live in concert performing all the hits plus songs from his new album.

In-depth Biography
Billy Ocean was one of the first Caribbean singers to be embraced by MTV, resulting in a string of Top Ten hits during the mid-'80s. Born Leslie Charles in Trinidad on January 21, 1950, Ocean moved to England at the age of eight, and by his teenaged years, was singing regularly in London clubs. During this time, Ocean paid the bills by working at Ford Motors, but continued to pen songs and perform, as he issued an obscure debut single in 1974 under the name of Scorched Earth. But by 1975, the singer had dropped his alias and was going by Billy Ocean, resulting in a self-titled debut that spawned the singer's first hit single, "Love Really Hurts Without You," peaking on the singles chart at number two in the United Kingdom and number 22 in the United States. Ocean continued to issue albums (1980's City Limit, 1981's Nights (Feel Like Getting Down), and 1982's Inner Feelings) plus further singles, with "L.O.D. (Love on Delivery)" and the title track from Nights (the latter of which crossed over onto the U.S. R&B charts) being sizeable hits; as he also began penning songs for other artists, including a track on LaToya Jackson's 1980 self-titled debut.

But breakthrough success was just around the corner for Ocean, as he scored a massive hit single in 1984 with "Caribbean Queen," a track that shot to the top of the charts worldwide. Depending on the region, the song's title and lyrics were changed slightly, resulting in the tune being known as "African Queen" and "European Queen" in other parts of the world, while the album it was taken from, Suddenly, was eventually certified double platinum (a few other singles, "Loverboy" and the ballad "Suddenly," were also successful). Ocean's winning streak continued with 1986's Love Zone (another double-platinum hit), which spawned a pair of hit singles: "When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going" (which was used as the theme song to the movie Jewel of the Nile), which peaked at number two, and the number-one "There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)." 1988 saw Ocean score another number-one single with "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car," taken from the platinum album Tear Down These Walls. But afterward, the hits dried up for Ocean (although his 1989 collection, Greatest Hits, has been a steady seller over the years), as such further albums as Time to Move On, L.I.F.E., and Showdown failed to spawn hits. ~ Greg Prato, Rovi