Simon Climie

Simon Climie (born 7 April 1957) is an English songwriter, musician and record producer. He is best known as the former lead singer of the UK duo Climie Fisher.

Climie was born in London. Beginning his career primarily as a songwriter/session musician, Climie found himself scoring early hits by the mid-1980s with compositions recorded by George Michael and Aretha Franklin ("I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)") and Pat Benatar ("Invincible"). He also wrote songs appearing on albums by such artists as Frida, Smokey Robinson, and Jeff Beck during this time. Then, on the fringes of session work, he did the Fairlight programming for Scritti Politti's album Cupid & Psyche.

Later in the 1980s, he formed Climie Fisher together with Rob Fisher, whom he had met when they were both session musicians at Abbey Road Studios. With Climie fronting the group, Climie Fisher had hits in many territories, with the singles "Love Changes (Everything)", which won an Ivor Novello Award, "Rise to the Occasion", "This Is Me" and more. Concurrent with his time in Climie Fisher, Climie continued with songwriting, landing another big hit in 1988 with Rod Stewart's recording of "My Heart Can't Tell You No".

After leaving EMI and the final Climie Fisher album Coming in for the Kill, Climie signed to Sony's Columbia label as a solo artist, releasing an album called Soul Inspiration in 1992.

In the mid-1990s Climie expanded to production, while continuing his songwriting career, producing and writing songs for a number of artists, including MN8, Eternal, Louise Redknapp, B.B. King, and Zucchero Fornaciari.

As the 90s progressed, Climie began a long-time collaboration with Eric Clapton beginning with his albums Pilgrim, Reptile, Riding with the King, Me And Mr. Johnson, Back Home and The Road to Escondido. In addition, he embarked on a similar musical partnership with Michael McDonald, producing McDonald's Motown, Motown II and Soul Speak albums. The third of these featured collaborations with Stevie Wonder and Toni Braxton, while the Grammy-nominated Motown spawned the US hit cover of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".

Climie's songwriting success continued into the 2010s, with Sara Evans cracking the American country music charts for more than six months with her cover of "My Heart Can't Tell You No", while Chris Medina – who had already reached number one in a number of territories around the world with his first single – collaborated with Climie on his second single, "One More Time", and several songs on the album What Are Words.

Together with U2 drummer Larry Mullen, Jr., Climie co-wrote the film score and theme for Man on the Train (2011 TriBeCa Productions film) in which Mullen stars with Donald Sutherland.