Mike Batt - 2000s and Current Work

2000s and Current Work

A Conservative Party supporter, Batt was asked to write their 2001 UK General Election song "Heartland".

After conceiving and co-creating the all-girl string quartet Bond and producing their first single, he then created the eight piece classical crossover band, The Planets. Their album Classical Graffiti was released in February 2002 and went straight to number one in the UK classical music chart on the day of release and remained there for three months.

Batt formed his own record label Dramatico in 2002, which has a small group of artists including Katie Melua, Carla Bruni, Marianne Faithful, Caro Emerald, Gurrumul, and Sarah Blasko. Since 2005, Dramatico has been one of the top three UK based indie labels, based on official sales figures. Batt is presently dedicating most of his time to guiding the career of Katie Melua, whom he discovered in 2002 while scouting for a jazz musical project on which he was working. Melua's album Call Off The Search (containing six of Batt's songs including "The Closest Thing to Crazy") was released on Dramatico in November 2003. After six weeks at number one in the UK Albums Chart, it sold six times platinum, over 1.8 million copies, in the UK and three million copies in total, making Melua the biggest selling UK female artist of 2004. Her second album, Piece by Piece (including Batt's song "Nine Million Bicycles") was released in September 2005, and to date has sold 3.5 million copies in Europe, going to number one in the UK, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and achieving top five chart positions in eight other countries.

In 2008, Batt started the year with one concert in Munich and a radio concert tour in Germany, to promote his new album, A Songwriter's Tale, a compilation album of his hits, some sung by himself and most of them newly recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Henry Spinetti, Ray Cooper, Chris Spedding, Mitch Dalton and Tim Harries.

His band toured with Spinetti (drums), Spedding (guitar), Harries (bass), Frank Gallagher (keyboards and violins), Luis Jardim (percussion) and Florence Rawlings (vocals and background vocals). After she completed her education, Batt signed Rawlings to Dramatico. He produced her album, A Fool In Love, and wrote six of its twelve songs ("The Only Woman In The World", "Jump On The Wagon", "Wolf Man", "Hard To Get", "Can't Hold Your Hand", and "Love Can Be A Battlefield").