Steven Alan Kipner is an American-born Australian multi-platinum-selling songwriter and record producer, with hits spanning a 40-year period, including chart-topping songs such as Olivia Newton-John's "Physical", Chicago's Grammy-nominated "Hard Habit to Break", "Genie in a Bottle" by Christina Aguilera, for which he won an Ivor Novello Award for International Hit of the Year, Natasha Bedingfield's "These Words", "The Hardest Thing" by 98 Degrees, "He Loves U Not" by Dream, "Stole" by Kelly Rowland, The Script's "Breakeven" and "The Man Who Can't Be Moved", and most recently, American Idol Season 8 Kris Allen's first top 5 single debut "Live Like We're Dying", and "Fight for This Love" by Cheryl Cole.
His first band, Steve & the Board achieved Australian chart success with the song "Giggle Eyed Goo," co-written by his father Nat Kipner and released on Spin Records in 1966. As a result of his father's A&R involvement in Spin Records, the members of Steve & the Board became good friends with the Bee Gees, who were also on the label. Nat Kipner, interviewed in 2001, said that Steve Kipner sang backing vocals on some songs on the Bee Gees album Spicks and Specks which was produced by Nat Kipner.
Steve & The Board broke up in early 1967. Kipner then formed a duo with Steve Groves and relocated to England in 1968, where they recorded an unsuccessful LP as Steve & Stevie on Toast Records. After Kipner ran into Barry Gibb in 1969, Kipner and Groves were signed to Robert Stigwood with Maurice Gibb as their producer. Under the name Tin Tin, the group scored an international hit, "Toast and Marmalade for Tea," including an American Top 20 placing in 1971. The next year Tin Tin, with additional member John Vallins, supported the Bee Gees on their American tour. In August 1969, Kipner, Groves, Gibb, and Billy Lawrie recorded the song "Have You Heard the Word" in a Tin Tin session, with Kipner on piano and participating in the lead vocals with Groves and Gibb. Maurice Gibb's vocal impersonation of John Lennon led to the song appearing on Beatles Bootleg albums as supposedly a lost Beatles recording.
Other bands
Kipner moved from London to California in 1974 and was a member of the bands "Friends", "Skyband", and "Think out Loud". He then recorded the solo album Knock the Walls Down in 1979. While writing and recording for his own album, Kipner came into contact with other artists who developed an interest in his songs for their albums, and accidentally fell into a song-writing career as more and more opportunities arose. At that time he met Australian manager Roger Davies, who in the early 1980s was working for Olivia Newton-John's manager Lee Kramer. Kipner had co-written a song with English songwriter Terry Shaddick entitled "Let's Get Physical," and played the demo to Davies, imagining the song would be suited to a male singer such as Rod Stewart. Kramer overheard the song from the next room and thought it would be a way to promote another one of his clients, Mr. Universe, by having him appear with Newton-John on her album cover. Retitled "Physical," the song spent ten weeks at number 1 on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart and was a worldwide hit.
