Gonna Make You A Star was a popular music recording by David Essex

David Essex

David Essex OBE is an English musician, singer-songwriter and actor. Since the 1970s, Essex has attained nineteen Top 40 singles in the UK , and sixteen Top 40 albums...

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Written by David Essex and produced by Jeff Wayne

Jeff Wayne

Jeffry "Jeff" Wayne, born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, is a musician best known for Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, his musical version of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds...

, Gonna Make You a Star was Essex's first number one single in the UK, spending three weeks at the top in November 1974.

The record features prominent use of the synthesizer

Synthesizer

A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

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In 2007 the single was released again by Lee Mead

Lee Mead

Lee Stephen Mead is an English musical theatre actor, best known for winning the title role in the 2007 West End revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat through the BBC reality TV casting show Any Dream Will Do...

, winner of the Any Dream Will Do

Any Dream Will Do (TV series)

Any Dream Will Do, often known as 'Joseph', was a 2007 talent show-themed television series produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom. It searched for a new, unknown lead to play Joseph in a West End revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.The show...

 BBC One

BBC One

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 TV competition, which was then shown in the spring of 2009 in the USA on BBC America

BBC America

BBC America is an American television network, owned and operated by BBC Worldwide, and available on both cable and satellite.-History:The channel launched on March 29, 1998, broadcasting comedy, drama and lifestyle programs from BBC Television and other British television broadcasters like ITV and...

; Mead then starred in the title role for 18 months in Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...

's West End revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. British comedian Peter Kay had his character Marc Park release Gonna Make You a Star as his first single after winning the fictional Talent Trek competition in his 2000 Channel 4 spoof documentary series That Peter Kay Thing. David Essex's song is also featured in his jukebox musical

Jukebox musical

A jukebox musical is a stage or film musical that uses previously released popular songs as its musical score. Usually the songs have in common a connection with a particular popular musician or group — either because they were written by, or for, the artists in question, or were at least...

 All the Fun of the Fair

All the Fun of the Fair

All the Fun of the Fair is a jukebox musical with a book by Jon Conway, based on the songs of David Essex. The title of the musical is taken from David Essex's 1975 album All the Fun of the Fair. The plot is fictional, not autobiographical...

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