Selected collaborations:
Before his global hits, Braide’s early career placed him alongside some of Britain’s most recognisable voices. In the early 1990s he contributed vocals to Squeeze’s Some Fantastic Place and Ridiculous, toured briefly with the band, and began a long-running writing partnership with Glenn Tilbrook, co-creating favourites such as “Untouchable” and “Parallel World.”
He then spent six weeks in Italy recording an album with Mick Hucknall — an intensive and creatively defining period that brought Braide to the attention of Eurythmics legend Dave Stewart. Stewart invited him to New York to collaborate at Electric Lady Studios, where the pair co-produced an album entitled Life In a Minor Key. These sessions laid the foundation for the fusion of melody, emotional clarity, and cinematic texture that would become central to Braide’s later work.
In 2006, Braide co-founded The Producers with Stephen Lipson. Recorded at Island Records’ legendary Basing Street Studios — once owned by Chris Blackwell and the birthplace of numerous landmark albums — the project was revisited by Lipson in 2024, who remixed and remastered the original sessions, featuring Braide’s vocals, for the expanded release Made in Basing St: Expanded Edition. The set celebrates a singular moment in British studio pop — ambitious, inventive, and ahead of its time.
In 2010, he co-founded Downes Braide Association with Yes keyboardist Geoff Downes — a long-running creative partnership whose albums, including Skyscraper Souls (2017) and Halcyon Hymns (UK #7, 2021), and the single Love Among The Ruins (UK #1 Heritage Rock Chart), have become landmarks in modern progressive pop, merging classic British songwriting with cinematic scope.
Chris Braide has maintained a long and creative partnership with Marc Almond, whose subversive, iconic presence in British pop continues to inspire new generations. The two first met during the sessions for Soft Cell’s Cruelty Without Beauty (2002), where Braide contributed vocals, sparking a collaboration that would span more than two decades.
Together they have co-written and produced a series of acclaimed albums — The Velvet Trail (2013), Chaos and a Dancing Star (2020), and Things We Lost (2022) — works that blend Almond’s theatrical lyricism with Braide’s widescreen production and melodic precision. Their songs Scar and A Kind of Love (from Hits and Pieces, UK #7, 2017) became modern classics within Almond’s catalogue. In 2020, they performed together at London’s Royal Festival Hall, celebrating a partnership that has come to symbolise the meeting point between art-pop and emotional candour.
In 2023, Braide reunited with another of Britain’s great pop iconoclasts, Andy Partridge of XTC, for the long-anticipated EP Queen of the Planet Wow — a six-track collection of surreal, melodic storytelling developed over nearly a decade of trans-Atlantic exchange. The project highlights Braide’s admiration for Partridge’s inventive songwriting and showcases their shared love of English eccentricity and sophisticated pop craft.
In 2025, he co-wrote and produced In Love With Anyone with Jessie Reyez and DJ Mustard for Macy Gray and the movie soundtrack Sneaks.
The Return to Song:
After decades at the heart of pop’s biggest moments, Braide has returned to the essence of why he began — melody, lyric, and friendship.
His recent trilogy of forthcoming albums with lyricist and friend Dean Johnson marks a homecoming: an unhurried exploration of melody, poetry, and the beauty of craft.
His career has texture: global hits that paid for freedom, and side projects that give meaning.
That’s not luck; it’s design.
He also took a few days off in between.