Matthew Wilder

Matthew Wilder (né Weiner; January 24, 1953) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his 1983 hit single "Break My Stride", which hit No. 2 on the Cashbox chart and No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. He also wrote the music for the Disney animated feature film Mulan and provided the singing voice for the character Ling.

Matthew Wilder was born on Long Island, New York, into a Jewish family. His mother was an opera singer and a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, and both his father and paternal grandfather worked as theatrical advertisers on Broadway. Wilder started studying classical piano at age four.

When Wilder was 14, his family relocated from Long Island to Greenwich Village. With his father's connections to Broadway, Wilder grew up watching a variety of musicals, which later influenced his musical style. By his second year of high school he had begun performing at the neighborhood's folk clubs, including The Bitter End, The Gaslight, and Café Wha. He recorded his first album of original material at age 16. Wilder graduated from the New Lincoln School.

Wilder was one-half of the Greenwich Village folk rock group Matthew & Peter in the 1970s. In 1978, he moved to Los Angeles, and sang for television commercials and as a backup vocalist for Rickie Lee Jones and Bette Midler.

Wilder's debut album, I Don't Speak the Language (1983), reached No. 49 on the Billboard 200, fueled by "Break My Stride". Wilder had some continued success with the single "The Kid's American", which reached No. 33 in 1984, but the single failed to match the success of "Break My Stride". Wilder's second album, Bouncin' Off the Walls (1984), failed to gain much momentum — even with an innovative music video for the single "Bouncin' Off the Walls" — with only the title track making the charts (No. 52), and was subsequently deemed a commercial failure.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.