‘Start Again’ is the closing theme to award winning Australian western/period drama short film ‘Sherbrooke Down: The Road to Cataract’, featuring much-loved Australian TV soap stars Patrick O’Connor, Sophie Dillman and Tim Robards. This heartfelt and emotional song showcases a powerful vocal collaboration by Steve McNaughton and his long-term co-writer, business partner and friend, James Stewart Keene. With its uncomplicated melancholic sound and its dramatic cinematic tone, this track ventures from country into adult contemporary territory.
Australian singer/songwriter Steve McNaughton has been writing songs for over 25 years and performing with different artists and bands around Sydney for nearly as many. Steve’s first album ‘Hardly Softly Rock’ was released in 1999.
Steve came to the music industry’s attention through music festivals in Midem France and Popkomm in Germany, and radio stations in the U.S.A., Germany and New Zealand. Tracks from the album held the top spot of the Ison Live Radio International Top 50 Chart for several weeks with ‘Hold Me Tonight’ peaking at number six.
In 2000 he released an EP for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games called ‘Sydney Olympic City’. The lead track ‘Sydney You’re So Beautiful’ received airplay from visiting international television networks and overseas airplay, well after the games had finished.
Steve McNaughton’s second album ‘Storm Chaser’ and its title track of the same name, was inspired by renowned American storm chaser Scott Currens and others like him. The song is a high energy track that fully captures the fury of nature when the plains turn violent across the United States’ mid-west.
Steve’s ‘Eagles Aloft’ has now taken him fully into the contemporary country music scene. Using Nashville artists, with some Americana and country influences for inspiration, the result is a slick album of crossover country. This album features a number of co-writes with Australian and U.S. writers, the best of which seem to come from his main collaborator, James Stewart Keene.
In 2021, ‘Start Again’ (co-written with James Stewart Keene and Janssen Langlands) was finally recorded for the closing credits of short film ‘Sherbrooke Down: The Road to Cataract’.