Legendary singer-songwriter David Gray is coming to Toronto on White Ladder anniversary tour

That’s right, two decades after the now household name David Gray was sent into international stardom, the artist is back and touring his beloved album, White Ladder.

David Gray will be bringing the 20th-anniversary tour to Toronto on ​​Tuesday, July 26, 2022, to the Budweiser Stage.

White Ladder was the English singer-songwriter’s fourth studio album, and with a modest following within the UK at the time of its release, the album took a while to climb its way up the charts. But once it did, White Ladder eventually spent three years (from May 2000 to March 2003) in the UK top 100, and went on to sell over seven million copies worldwide. It remains in the top 30 best-selling British albums of all time and, is the best-selling album ever in Ireland.

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Gray’s profound success instigated a new wave of acoustic style singer-songwriters that still prospers today — a genre that can be traced from David Gray to the more recent iconism of Ed Sheeran.

“What happened with White Ladder involved more than music,” Gray says of the album’s success. “It was a sort of heart and soul moment of total surrender for everybody involved, for me and the audience. That was it. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Gray released White Ladder solely in Ireland on his own label in November 1998. It was then released in the UK in 1999 before American superstar Dave Matthews was such a fan that he personally licensed the album for his own label in the US. 

After East-West records, a division of Warner, released the song ‘Babylon’ as a single in the UK in June 2000, it became one of the hits of the summer. White Ladder then became a global phenomenon, and Gray went from playing pubs to theatres to arenas within months.

The album is full of raw, emotional ballads that bring one back to a shift in times. The album captured the change in mood from the grungey, pompous nineties to the nervous hope for the future at the turn of the century.

Twenty years later, White Ladder is still an album of great depth and beauty that captures a special moment in time — and you can relive that glorious past with David Gray on his upcoming tour.

David Gray — Toronto Concert

When: Friday, July 15, 2022
Time: 8 pm
Where: Budweiser Stage — 630 Hamilton Street, Toronto
Price: Tickets available via Ticketmaster starting at $45.75