The feel-good tune "Break My Stride"
from 1984 made Matthew Wilder an overnight star. The native New Yorker
got his start as a folk musician in the early 1970s, strumming his guitar
in Greenwich Village as half of a duo called Matthew & Peter. In 1978
he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his music career and eventually became
a jingle singer, crooning on ads for Maxwell House and Honda and doing
backup work for artist such as Rickie Lee Jones and Bette Midler. It wasn't
until the radio-friendly "Break My Stride" (which was on his
1984 debut album, I Don't Speak the Language) that Wilder
became a star in his own right. "It was a time when I was just trying
to dig up as much perseverance as I could," Wilder told PEOPLE in
1984 about the inspiration for the Top 5-charting "Stride."
"The song was a gift to myself. I didn't have the support of anyone
in the business." But fame was fleeting and his follow-up album flunked.
Content with working behind the scenes, Wilder is now an award-winning
music producer. Wilder, who's married with two sons, spent the late 1980s
and early 90s writing songs and doing production work.
