Photo: Gary Wood · CC BY-SA 2.0 · credits
Tier 3 · vertical & regional
Alan Frew
Person · male · Canada · Coatbridge · born 1956
musician
Timeline
1 events◦ Birth 1
1950s
Biography
English biography344 words · 8 sectionssource: wikipedia-en · licence CC BY-SA 4.0 · revision 1375725877
Biography
Alan Graham Frew (born November 8, 1956) is a Scottish-Canadian singer, songwriter, actor, and author, who is the lead singer of the Canadian rock band Glass Tiger. He has also released three solo albums.
Early life
Born 8 November 1956, in Coatbridge, Scotland, Frew moved to Newmarket, Ontario, at age 16 with his family.
Musical career
In 1983, Frew and others formed Glass Tiger. In 1986, the band released its first album, The Thin Red Line. Two of its songs, "Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)" and "Someday", reached the Top 10 in the U.S. charts. The Thin Red Line went quadruple platinum in Canada and gold in the United States. Glass Tiger was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1987 and has won five Canadian Juno Awards.
Frew and Stephan Moccio co-wrote "I Believe", which "became the theme song for Canada's Olympic Broadcast Consortium for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver" and "Free to Be", which is used by the Toronto Maple Leafs as their theme song.
Frew portrayed the character Ewan McCauley in the 2010 Canadian comedy film GravyTrain.
In 2025, amid the controversy around Donald Trump's trade war against Canada, Frew released the solo single "Canada's Song (Free to Be Strong and Free)". He performed the song at concerts on Glass Tiger's This Island Earth tour, and on the This Hour Has 22 Minutes election special.
Personal life
On 20 August 2015, Frew suffered a stroke causing trauma to his right side. As of January 2018, Frew had made a full recovery.
Awards and recognition
Frew has received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal "in recognition of his service to the Canadian arts, and for his dedication to helping poverty-stricken children". With co-writer Sharon Brennan, Frew wrote The Action Sandwich: A Six Step Recipe to Success by Doing What You're Already Doing (ISBN 978-0-9736863-9-5), a 2007 autobiography.
Solo albums
Hold On (1994)
Wonderland (2000)
80290 Rewind (2015)
with Glass Tiger
The Thin Red Line (1986)
Diamond Sun (1988)
Simple Mission (1991)
31 (2018)
33 (2019)
Solo singles
"Healing Hands" (1994) [#8 CAN]
"So Blind" (1995)
"Canada's Song (Free to Be Strong and Free)" (2025)
Discography & profile
Normalised profile
Percentiles are computed over every artist in the database, so a tier-3 artist can still sit in the 95th percentile on a single axis.
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 4 | 24.3th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 0 | 0th |
| Studio albums | 0 | 0th |
| Awards recorded | 0 | 0th |
| Timeline events | 1 | 40.6th |
| Recording span (years) | — | no data |
| Genres | 1 | 56th |
Percentiles are computed at render time; missing values mean the artist has no data on that axis.
Discography (0 release groups)
No discography rows stored yet
MusicBrainz enrichment for this artist is still pending. Release groups appear here once it runs.
Stats & PK
Percentile within all 23,672 published artists.Put Alan Frew head-to-head →
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 4 | 24.3th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 0 | 0th |
| Studio albums | 0 | 0th |
| Awards recorded | 0 | 0th |
| Timeline events | 1 | 40.6th |
| Recording span (years) | — | no data |
| Genres | 1 | 56th |
Awards & honours
Line-up
| Name | From | To | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glass Tiger(band) | — | present |
Where this record comes from
portrait—Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 · retrieved 11 October 2026
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alan_Frew_2011.jpgcore—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4706651genre—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 11 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4706651seed-list—wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Frewbiography—wikipedia-en · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Frew
Why this artist is in the database
- List of Canadian musicians
- List of Scottish musicians
Tier rule: curated genre/region list
Image: Gary Wood · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Wikidata: Q4706651 · MusicBrainz: 39e1e1a0-8d22-4106-bc3e-9b5f0da74d74
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