''Edge of Winter'' is the sixth studio album by New Zealand singer-songwriter

Sharon O'Neill Sharon Lea O'Neill (born 23 November 1952) is a New Zealand singer-songwriter and pianist, who had an Australasian hit single in 1983 with " Maxine" which reached No. 16 on both the Australian Kent Music Report and Recording Industry Association ...

. The album was released by

Polydor Polydor Records Ltd. is a German-British record label that operates as part of Universal Music Group. It has a close relationship with Universal's Interscope Geffen A&M Records label, which distributes Polydor's releases in the United States. ...

in August 1990. The album marks O'Neill's last solo studio album of new material. All the songs were written by O'Neill or co-written with

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

ist/

keyboardist A keyboardist or keyboard player is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instr ...

Alan Mansfield of

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

, Note: requires user to input song title e.g. EDGE OF WINTER who is also her domestic partner. O'Neil and Mansfield had written tracks for Dragon including "Young Years" for their 1989 album ''Bondi Road''. Mansfield also produced the album. The album's lead single, " Satin Sheets" reached No. 106 in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. The follow-up single, "Poster Girl", did not chart. There is also a new, more modern version of the 1983 single "Losing You" featured on the album.

Background

Sharon O'Neill began her career in the 1970s in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, then gained major success in Australia. The early 1980s proved O'Neill's most commercially successful solo period, however a legal battle with her then

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caused a delay in her career. O'Neill returned with 1987's ''Danced in the Fire'' on

, and recorded her follow-up, ''Edge of Winter'', for the same label. ''Edge of Winter'' was not a commercial success, neither were its two singles "Satin Sheets" and "Poster Girl". Speaking to ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' in April 1991, O'Neill said: "I would like for it to be heard more. Whether that's my fault or the record company's I don't know. But there just hasn't been enough support from radio. The album was released at a terrible time and it probably got swallowed up." In 2014, O'Neill was interviewed by Murray Cammick for Audio Culture. When speaking of her career with Polydor, she said: "It was great doing the two Polydor albums, I put a lot of hard work into them but the last album ''Edge Of Winter'' is as scarce as hen's teeth, I've only got one copy. They only made a certain amount."

Track listing

References

{{Authority control 1990 albums Sharon O'Neill albums