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Ice-T In 1993

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Nearly 30 Years After Their Debut, Body Count's 'Carnivore' Is The Thrash-Metal Band's Most Fully Realized Album

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Led by iconic rapper Ice-T, the L.A.-based seven-piece keep their socially conscious themes consistent and the music louder than ever on their seventh studio album
Katherine Turman
GRAMMYs
Mar 10, 2020 - 11:06 am

In early 1992 Ernie Cunnigan visited the Burbank office of Howie Klein. The guitarist (who goes by Ernie C.) and the then-president of Reprise/Warner Bros. Records were listening to the upcoming self-titled debut from Cunnigan’s band, Body Count, fronted by his Crenshaw High School buddy Tracy Marrow, already famous as rapper Ice-T. Ice, with the savvy creative connectivity that guides his multi-hyphenate media career to this day, introduced his forthcoming metal band in 1991 via tracks on O.G. Original Gangster, his fourth album.

It's not unusual for high school pals to form a band. What was unusual, though, was that Body Count was a hardcore thrash metal band comprised of all-black musicians, with point-blank lyrics that were both insightful and incite-ful concerning racial and social inequities and the climate of America. Listening to the 18-track debut, Klein praised it, while voicing concern about the lyrics of "Momma's Gotta Die Tonight," a song about the matricide and dismemberment of a racist parent. Turns out it was the last track, a ditty called "Cop Killer," that should have given the executive pause. 

While Klein was and remains stridently opposed to censorship and is a dedicated free speech advocate, Body Count, per the era, was released with a parental advisory sticker (as was Original Gangster). Less than two months after Body Count dropped, Los Angeles exploded in fiery violence in reaction to the acquittal of four policemen in the beating of Rodney King, as well as the shooting death of black teenager Latasha Harlins by a Korean grocer. (The grocer was given only probation.) It was the worst possible climate for "Cop Killer," with lyrics including "F**k the police, yeah!" and shout-outs to then L.A.P.D. chief Daryl Gates, Ice's "dead homies" and King. The blowback went all the way up to then-President George Bush, and though Time Warner supported Ice-T in his fight against the song's opponents, he eventually pulled the cut from new pressings of the album.

Currently, streaming services including Spotify and Apple Music offer the version sans the group's most (in)famous song, replacing "Cop Killer" with "Freedom Of Speech" from Ice's 1989 solo album, The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say, edited to add samples of Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" and the voice of political punker Jello Biafra. On YouTube, "Cop Killer" has more than 1.5 million views, with most of the comments thoughtful and positive, understanding the intentionally incendiary messages Body Count was delivering. Ultimately, if Body Count isn’t a classic record in the way that critics consider Nirvana’s Nevermind or Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back to be, it’s an important and groundbreaking one. As Ice-T has said, Body Count is: "a protest record,” not the norm in the metal world, but still the way BC's songs operate today.

Indeed, 28 years later, things haven’t changed. Biafra is also on Body Count's powerful new album, Carnivore. Police actions like "stop and frisk" (the NYC law enforcement program that was proven to disproportionally target black and Latino men) wasn’t legally discredited until 2014. Body Count’s one-time bassist, Lloyd "Mooseman" Roberts III, was murdered in South Central Los Angeles in 2001 in an accidental drive-by; in the last 12 months, 126 black men were killed by guns in L.A. County, as opposed to 23 white men. And Ice-T and Body Count are still raging against the machine.

Ice-T enjoys pushing buttons lyrically, and if they’ve sometimes been heavy-handed or misguided ("KKK Bitch" or "Bitch In The Pit"), Ice-T is a politically eloquent, passionate and personal songwriter, which can be too easily overlooked given Body Count's volume-heavy metal chops and Ice's delivery, a speedy vocal style that’s been traditionally more aggro-rapping than melodic singing.  

That said, Carnivore is Body Count’s best album to date; it’s the most fully realized musically, and there’s a cohesion to the vocals and music that led Body Count bassist Vincent Price to lay out the band’s growth in a Metallica timeline: "Manslaughter [2014] was basically Kill ‘Em All; Bloodlust [2017] was our Ride The Lightning, and Carnivore’s our Master Of Puppets."

He's not wrong, and though Ice-T’s more than 20-year stint as detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit has precluded lengthy Body Count tours, the buzz is loud for this seventh album.

Ice-T may be the original gangster, yet he’s patient, articulate and fervent in explaining songs and motivations to audiences and the press alike. "When I'm Gone," featuring Amy Lee of Evanescence, was inspired by the killing of Nipsey Hussle. It’s a reminder, as he says in the tune, to "tell the people that you love, that you love them now. … Don't wait; tomorrow may be too f**king late."

His prolific musical social criticism and seemingly left-leaning views are thoughtful and targeted, despite the vitriol of so many Body Count songs. In the nearly 30 years since founding his revolutionary band, Ice-T observes, "I think you’ve got less racism; less people, but more avid racism. It’s unnerving to think that we’ve come so far but there’s still so far to go." As he advised in a 2017 interview, "Don’t just be angry. Know what you’re talking about so you don’t alienate someone who should be an ally."

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Lamb Of God

Lamb Of God

Photo: Travis Shinn

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Why Lamb Of God Frontman Randy Blythe Is Rejecting The 'New Abnormal'

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The singer for the five-time GRAMMY-nominated metal quintet gives an inside look into the pointed social commentary behind the band's eye-opening self-titled eighth album
Katherine Turman
GRAMMYs
Jun 18, 2020 - 7:11 am

During his more than quarter-century as frontman for five-time GRAMMY-nominated metal quintet Lamb Of God, singer Randy Blythe has been on the receiving end of questions from journalists ranging from inane to tough. But in the heated spring of 2020, as conversations and actions about systemic racism become omnipresent, he is now asking himself those same "uncomfortable questions."

On Instagram, accompanying photos he shot from a June 2 Black Lives Matter protest near his Richmond, Va., home, Blythe was characteristically frank: "I'm a white man with black friends. In this time & beyond, I must ask myself what that really means—in fact, I must ask myself UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS about what FRIENDSHIP ITSELF means." He goes on to mention his musical side projects that feature Black members, as well as his time performing as "the only white dude" in his favorite "legendary black punk rock group" (Bad Brains).

But it was the issues brought to light by the killing of George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police, last month that truly changed the conversation Blythe is having with himself, as it has for many. When the singer meets his Black musician friends, across every genre, Blythe says they hug and call each other "brother." 

"So what does that truly mean to me?" he wonders on Instagram. "Is it just a cheap word for me to throw around in MY world—the safety of a metal festival backstage dressing room where their faces look different than almost everybody else's there?" 

To generalize broadly, metal has largely been the province of white, blue-collar suburban males. Even Body Count, the pioneering all-black metal band who formed in Los Angeles in 1990, attracts a predominately white crowd, despite the fact that the band is fronted by gangsta rap pioneer Ice-T.

In 2013, Canadian-born, New York-based journalist, scholar and metal fan Laina Dawes published "What Are You Doing Here? A Black Woman's Life And Liberation In Heavy Metal," an acclaimed book that explores race, gender and heavy metal. She recently penned an article for metal/rock magazine Metal Hammer, writing, in part, "Black folks in the metal scene are realizing that some of their non-black and white friends – folks they hang out with at a metal show, talk to online or in some cases, are bandmates – are racist. Not uninformed, or simply naive, but balls-out racist."

Read: Skin, Lzzy Hale, Reba Meyers On Women Rocking The Metal World

Blythe, 49, is not uniformed, naive or racist, yet he notes that the phrase "'I'm not racist, I have Black friends,' is a pretty common thing you hear white people say- I've said it myself," he writes on Instagram. "Again, what does that really MEAN? It's UNCOMFORTABLE for me to ask myself this question, but there are A LOT of uncomfortable conversations that must be had if things are to get better … So I cannot have black friends only when it is convenient & safe for me to do so, not if I want to look them in the eye the next time I see them."

While he doesn't call himself an activist—though he's attended Black Lives Matter protests and has documented them on camera—Blythe literally stands up for what he believes, and by dint of his fame, combined with reasoned demeanor, people take notice. 

"I let my words, actions and art speak for themselves, you know?" he tells the Recording Academy by phone from home. It's a not-uncommon refrain for artists, but it's not lip service for Blythe.

"Routes," the fourth single off Lamb Of God's new self-titled album, out Friday (June 19), draws from Blythe's experience protesting, in person, against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Its lyrics are gripping: "A black snake beneath the ground / Extinction dripping from his mouth / Poisons water, hearts of men / Who choke the sky and rape the land." The very intentional guest vocals on the track are from Testament singer Chuck Billy, who's born to a Mexican mother and Native American father of the Pomo Native Americans, an indigenous people of Northern California. 

Blythe's convictions are well-suited to Lamb Of God's articulate, informed songs and albums, which have earned the band gold records, with 2009's Wrath hitting the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Hard Rock, Rock and Tastemaker charts and No. 2 on the Billboard 200. They repeated those No. 1 positions with Resolution (2012), while the band's last album, VII: Sturm und Drang (2015), debuted at No. 3 in North America and in the Top 5 in several countries. Alongside Blythe, Lamb Of God comprises guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler and bassist John Campbell; drummer Art Cruz, who's performed in and toured with the band intermittently since July 2018, makes his recording debut with the group on Lamb Of God.

As the band's eighth album, Lamb Of God is an eye-opener on every level: It kicks off with the spooky, slow, gloom-to-a-scream of the cri-de-coeur of "WAKE UP" in "Memento Mori" and ends with "On The Hook," a speed-metal, mosh-pit-worthy rager about opioid addiction.

With Lamb of God, the band created excellent, pointed social commentary bolstered by equally powerful musicality, well-suited to Blythe's biggest concern: climate change. On album track "Poison Dream," featuring Hatebreed singer Jamey Jasta, Blythe rails, "Fortunes made on misery / A burning river, a black sea … Toxic temple and polluted bliss / Residuals for evil men / I never had a choice in this / sacrificed for their profit." 

"I realized that every single place I've ever lived has had water pollution," Blythe, an avid surfer, reflects on the song's genesis. "Right down the road from Jamey is some sort of manufacturing plant that spills tons and tons of shi*t into the river there. He and I talked about this, and it's against FDA regulations. But because they're bazillionaires, it's just easier for them to pay the daily fine." (The song's final lyrics capture this dilemma: "Because you're not a human being, just a fine to be paid / Just the cost of doing business in their cancerous trade.") 

Read: Meet Armageddon Records, The Record Store-Turned-Label For Punks And Metalheads

Blythe has a gift for transforming his outrage toward miscreants into words, but he doesn't want to spell things out too clearly for listeners. "I decided against doing a track-by-track thing on this album because I think it destroys all the mystery of the music; it's destroying art, in a way. I think people should look at things and take it in; I don't want my hand held." 

Rather, he opts for the way he came up consuming music: not having an artist give a raison d'être behind every musical move, not being able to look up the minutiae on Wikipedia. For Blythe, not having a "guide" during his musical coming-of-age allowed him to internalize the music.

"It let me make it my own," he explains. "If I say, 'This song is about this and this song is about this,' [then] someone is going to listen to it with that in mind. When you make art, you let it loose into the world. It becomes everyone's. I don't want to deprive anyone of that experience." 

That said, Blythe will give some hints to his passionate process: "Every single one [of the songs on Lamb Of God] relate back to my concern with the environment, from the first one, 'Gears,' because it deals with the industrial revolution, which has a massive, massive, massive impact on the environment. That's how we got here, you know?"

The song "Memento Mori"—the title means "an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death"—refers to "the universe in the palm of your hand," which is a pretty clear description of the world's addiction to small screens. 

Once a former alcoholic, the now-sober Blythe recently battled a new addiction: the pull of endless information. 

"I'm addicted to 'more,'" the dread-locked singer says. "More of everything. More alcohol, more drugs, more books, more whatever. For me, and this is something I've had to institute again starting yesterday, I'm going down the news and Instagram rabbit hole. I found myself, and that's where ["Memento Mori"] stemmed from, doing constant consumption of news, mostly."

His digital fixation got so intense—he says he was checking up to 15 different news sources on the daily, from "super tree-hugger left" to the "weirdest alt-right" sites, in search of "some objective truth"—he had to install a VPN blocker to restrict use of certain apps and websites. 

"It was driving me mad," Blythe says, "and I was wasting too much time on Instagram in the studio while I was tracking, just mindlessly looking, under the pretext of 'keeping up with my friends.'" 

Yet, he understood that "if I'm keeping up with my friends, I'm talking to my friends," he reflects. "I'm not looking at their posts, what they did yesterday." Rather than attempting to parse a million discrete sources, or give in to his screen-news addiction, Blythe opted to reach out to those very friends. 

Read: Death Angel Drummer Will Carroll Opens Up About Fighting COVID-19: "It Looked Like I Was Going To Die"

"During this pandemic, I've wanted to stay informed," he says. "But after a while, it comes down to me being responsible for my own health and looking at things objectively, trying to make a semi-educated decision. For me, it looks like talking to my friends who are in the medical professions, in [Emergency Medical Services], who are New York City firefighters, who are scientists. Because I'm not a smart guy, I got to call my smart friends [and] say, 'Guys, tell me what in the hell is going on and what I need to do.'"

When it comes to climate change and going green in the context of the music business, Blythe doesn't shy away from the tough questions—nor does he have all the solutions. There are groups such as REVERB, a nonprofit environmental organization that works with musicians to reduce the environmental impact of their tours. But it can be prohibitively expensive for a band to truly "go green." 

"For touring, that's a frustrating thing," Blythe, who drives a 10-year-old truck he plans to replace with something more ecofriendly in the future, says. "I reached out to our management because there are tour buses that run on biodiesel. And there are hybrid buses, but they're very few and far between and very expensive to maintain. Our carbon footprint as a band is huge. It's massive, and it's distressing to me, because we're either in a plane, a train, on a boat, a bus or in a car on the way to the venue. We've taken every single thing to a venue except for a helicopter so far, and all of that runs on fossil fuels.

"It's important to do what you can and recycle and all that stuff, but I think that the bigger question that needs to be asked is, 'How are we going to move away from these fossil fuels—period?' Because on a purely pragmatic level, fossil fuels are a finite resource. Why? Because they're made out of fucking fossils, things that died millions of years ago, and it become compacted in the earth and turned into coal and oil and gas and all that stuff." 

The singer has hopes that today's younger people—the Greta Thunbergs and future generations—will put words into action. "There's a population explosion, and we're using up these resources more and more and more. That means we do not have millions of years to wait until, you know, stuff turns into oil."

"On a purely pragmatic level, on a common sense level, this is where it drives me crazy" he furthers. "On a common-sense level, wouldn't we start looking for a replacement now? And implementing that now? Oil [lobbyists] and all that stuff, they care about profit margins, and that's it. That is disgusting to me; it drives me insane." 

Fortunately, Blythe has music, especially his ultra-energetic and intense live performances, as catharsis—at least he does when there's not a pandemic. Lyrics and interviews serve as a form of activism, education and personal accountability for him, too. One of his crucial goals is to always work on keeping his "moral compass correctly calibrated." That said, he acknowledges, "I'm a human being and I make mistakes and I say stupid shit just like everybody else, but overall I'm a pretty good guy." 

"I exist outside of my band. I think that's a misconception that people have," he furthers. "I am a human being; I am Randy Blythe, first and foremost. I believe what I believe, and I say what I want to say, when I want to say it, how I want to say it, without any regard whatsoever, as long as I'm not doing harm. And as long as I am speaking the truth as I know it, because I believe the truth is empirical." 

On the Lamb Of God track "Reality Bath," Blythe urges listeners to "Reject the new abnormal," warning against slipping into "dull indifference / when horror has been normalized a cynical defense." The lyrics dig deeper into his hopes. "The strongest hearts will raise their voice against the murderous tide: No! It can't go on like this! / Millions of voices echo in the darkness, screaming: No! I won't accept this!" 

The track ultimately concludes with the man who is not an activist growling his pained and passionate truth: "The faint of heart will fall in line, but I will not submit."

Nearly 30 Years After Their Debut, Body Count's 'Carnivore' Is The Thrash-Metal Band's Most Fully Realized Album

Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz in 'Clueless' (1995)

Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz in 'Clueless' (1995)

Courtesy Photo: CBS via Getty Images

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How 1995 Became A Blockbuster Year For Movie Soundtracks

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From 'Clueless' to 'Dangerous Minds,' soundtracks were big business in 1995, but the year's hits offered no clear formula for success
Jack Tregoning
GRAMMYs
Aug 9, 2020 - 4:00 am

Mariah Carey, Alanis Morissette, 2Pac and The Smashing Pumpkins all had No. 1 albums in 1995. Despite such hallowed competition, four movie soundtracks also topped the Billboard 200 chart that year. Two were family-friendly Disney behemoths: Pocahontas and The Lion King, the latter still powering from the previous year. The other chart-topping soundtracks, for the Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle Dangerous Minds and the stoner comedy Friday, were no one's idea of kids' entertainment. 

Beyond those No. 1 spots, 1995 marked a fascinating midpoint in a soundtrack-heavy decade. According to a New York Times report, a new release CD that year typically cost anywhere between $13-$19. At that price, a soundtrack needed major star power or an undeniable concept. 

For movie studios and musicians alike, the format was rich with opportunity. However, there was no certain formula for success. Some soundtracks were guided by a single producer, while others drew on a grab bag of then-current songs. Several featured one clear hit that eclipsed the soundtrack, or occasionally the movie itself. For all their differing approaches, the soundtracks of 1995 epitomized the energy and audacity of the decade, while also establishing tropes for the next 25 years. 

The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album (1992) set the bar high for the decade. With a 20-week reign at No. 1, it remains the biggest-selling soundtrack of all time. Whitney Houston performed six songs on the album, including the titanic power ballad, "I Will Always Love You." (At the 1994 GRAMMYs, the track won the GRAMMY for Record Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, while the soundtrack itself earned the Album Of The Year award.)

While The Bodyguard magnified their commercial potential, movie soundtracks like Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) framed the medium as an artistic showpiece. Throughout the '90s, Tarantino and fellow indie auteurs Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater and Spike Lee made music a key character in their films. (The latter continues the trend on his latest movie, Da 5 Bloods, alongside six-time GRAMMY-winning composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard.) Both instincts, for commercial returns and artistic validation, were well-represented in 1995. 

Read: 'The Bodyguard' Soundtrack: 25 Years After Whitney Houston's Masterpiece

Batman Forever (1995) epitomized the big-budget, mass-appeal mid-'90s soundtrack. Spanning PJ Harvey to Method Man, the 14-track set employed some tried-and-true tactics. First, only five songs on the track list appear in the movie itself, ushering in a rash of "Music From And Inspired By" soundtracks. Second, its featured artists largely contributed songs you couldn't find on other albums: According to Entertainment Weekly in 1995, U2 landed a reported $500,000 advance for "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," an offcut from the band's Zooropa album sessions. 

Most significantly, Batman Forever backed a surprise smash in Seal's "Kiss From A Rose." Originally released as a single in 1994, the ballad blew up as the movie's "love theme." In its music video, Seal croons in the light of the Bat-Signal, intercut with not-very-romantic scenes from the film. Outshining U2, "Kiss From A Rose" reached No. 1 in 1995; one year later, the song won for Song Of The Year, Record Of The Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 38th GRAMMY Awards.

Both Bad Boys and Dangerous Minds had their "Kiss From A Rose" equivalent in 1995. Diana King's reggae-fusion jam "Shy Guy" proved the breakout star of Bad Boys, transcending an R&B- and hip-hop-heavy soundtrack. Meanwhile, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise," featuring singer L.V., the key track on Dangerous Minds, became the top-selling single of 1995; it won the rapper his first, and only, GRAMMY for Best Rap Solo Performance the next year. 

Other soundtracks from 1995 endure as perfect documents of their time and place. Clueless compiled a cast from '90s rock radio to accompany the adventures of Alicia Silverstone's Cher Horowitz and her high school clique: Counting Crows, Smoking Popes, Cracker and The Muffs. Coolio, the everywhere man of 1995, contributed "Rollin' With My Homies." 

From the same city, but a world outside Cher's Beverly Hills bubble, came the Ice Cube- and Chris Tucker-starring Friday. Its soundtrack took a whistle-stop tour of West Coast hip-hop and G-funk via Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Tha Alkaholiks and Mack 10. True to the era, the music video for Dr. Dre's "Keep Their Heads Ringin'" is half stoner comedy, half cheesy action movie. 

Waiting To Exhale, the 1995 drama directed by Forest Whitaker, boasted a soundtrack with a clear author. Babyface, the R&B superproducer with 11 GRAMMY wins for his work with the likes of Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton, produced the set in full. Following Babyface's co-producer role on The Bodyguard soundtrack three years prior, Waiting To Exhale featured two new songs from the movie's star, Whitney Houston. 

Read: 'Score': Soundtracks take us on an emotional ride

Houston's "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" and "Why Does It Hurt So Bad" led a track list that also featured Aretha Franklin, TLC, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige and then-newcomer Brandy. A powerful showcase of Black women across generations, the soundtrack has prevailed as a standalone work, going on to receive multiple nominations, including Album Of The Year, at the 1997 GRAMMYs. In a crowded year for soundtracks, which also included Dinosaur Jr. founder Lou Barlow's work on Larry Clark's contentious Kids, Waiting To Exhale demonstrated the power of a singular vision. 

For the most part, the soundtracks of 1995 tried a bit of everything. The previous year, The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack went all-in on covers, including Nine Inch Nails overhauling Joy Division's "Dead Souls." That trend continued into 1995, from Tori Amos covering R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" for Higher Learning to Evan Dando's update of Big Star's "The Ballad Of El Goodo" in Empire Records to Tom Jones gamely taking on Lenny Kravitz's "Are You Gonna Go My Way"' for The Jerky Boys movie. (Is there a more '90s sentence than that?) 

Elsewhere, the Mortal Kombat soundtrack blended metal and industrial rock (Fear Factory, Gravity) with dance music (Utah Saints, Orbital). For every Dead Presidents, which zeroed in on '70s funk and soul, there was a Tank Girl, which threw together Bush, Björk, Veruca Salt and Ice-T to match the movie's manic tone. 

Continuing from their '90s winning streak, grown-up soundtracks have proven surprisingly resilient. In an echo of Babyface's role on Waiting To Exhale, Kendrick Lamar oversaw production on 2018's chart-topping, multi-GRAMMY-nominated Black Panther: The Album, uniting an A-list cast under his creative direction. On the same front, Beyonce executive-produced and curated The Lion King: The Gift, the soundtrack album for the 2019 remake of the Disney classic, which spotlighted African and Afrobeats artists. In 2016, Taylor Swift and One Direction's Zayn recorded "I Don't Wanna Live Forever (Fifty Shades Darker)," pitching for the movie tie-in bump enjoyed in 1995 by Seal and Coolio. (The millennial stars stopped short of including scenes from the movie in their music video.) 

Like Batman Forever back in the day, the DC Universe continues to put stock in soundtracks. Both Suicide Squad (2016) and its follow-up, Birds Of Prey (2020), are packed tight with to-the-minute pop, R&B and hip-hop. Each soundtrack reads like a who's who of the musical zeitgeist. In 1995, Mazzy Star, Brandy and U2 grouped up behind Batman. In 2016, Twenty One Pilots, Skrillex and Rick Ross powered the Suicide Squad. In 2020, everyone from Doja Cat to Halsey to YouTube star Maisie Peters form Team Harley Quinn. 

As 1995 taught us time and time again, nothing traps a year in amber quite like a movie soundtrack. 

How 1995 Became The Year Dance Music Albums Came Of Age

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Daughtry

Chris Daughtry

Photo courtesy of Daughtry

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The Salvation Of Chris Daughtry: How He Conquered Music-Biz Machinations & Fear Of Irrelevance For Triumphant New Album 'Dearly Beloved'

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On the surface, Chris Daughtry had the best possible outcome for a fourth-place "American Idol" winner: The first Daughtry album made massive sales. But it's only on his newest, 'Dearly Beloved,' that he has complete creative autonomy
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Sep 15, 2021 - 12:38 pm

Chris Daughtry disliked a Dr. Luke and Max Martin song so much he screamed in the studio while recording it. It was late in the recording process for Daughtry, his namesake band's debut album. Despite being an adept songwriter, the people upstairs asked him to record the pop overlords' co-write "Feels Like Tonight" at the eleventh hour. He couldn't connect with slightly generic lyrics like "I was waiting for the day you'd come around / I was chasing, but nothing was all I found." It didn't feel like him.

"There are recordings of me in the vocal booth going 'F*** this song! I hate this f***ing song!" Daughtry tells GRAMMY.com. Despite coming in a respectable fourth place on "American Idol" in 2006, "It was written for me as if I won the show. If I won, this would have been that song that you sing at the end, where the f***ing confetti's falling on you and you're singing [Clenched voice] 'And it feeeeels like...' You know what I mean? That was going to be my celebratory win."

By any measure, Daughtry was a "celebratory win" for the band. It became the fastest-selling debut rock album in history at the time, doing numbers that some out-and-out "Idol" winners might envy. But what's he been up to since? Despite the impressive raw data, the singer's label bosses never quite let him off the leash. Plus, endless executive turnover left him adrift, grasping for and missing ephemeral radio trends. But while Daughtry remains his best-selling work, he's arguably just made the first of his own volition.

That album is Dearly Beloved, the band's first outside of RCA, which will release September 17. (These days, they're rounded out by guitarists Brian Craddock and Josh Steely, keyboardist Elvio Fernandes, bassist Josh Paul and drummer Brandon Maclin.) With vibrant highlights like "Desperation," "Heavy is the Crown" and "Break Into My Heart," it's a slick, atmospheric modern rock record with a dystopian-flick vibe. But, more importantly, every second of it is Daughtry's and Daughtry's alone.

What a difference a decade and a half makes: the once-tightly-goateed young man nervously belting the Box Tops' "The Letter" for a skeptical Simon Cowell has sprouted a Michael Stipe-style beard and procured tribal tattoos. Like a streetbound, malnourished Maine Coon rapidly regrowing its coat and gaining healthy weight upon adoption, he looks prosperous and healthy. For the former service manager at a car dealership who's been through hell and back in music, it's been a wild ride to artistic liberation.

If not for his doggedness drive for success, everything about Chris Daughtry's early life suggested anonymity. He worked said day job in North Carolina while obsessed with '90s rockers from Live to Stone Temple Pilots to Alice in Chains, he performed gigs locally.

After an audition for "Rock Star: INXS" in 2005 proved to be a nonstarter, Daughtry auditioned for "American Idol" with a bittersweet overture from Deanna. "This is his dream, and when he married me, he took on my two kids," she exclaimed on-camera through tears. "I'm so emotional because I know this is his chance." His yowling, pitch-perfect version of "The Letter" was his ticket into the show—despite Cowell's rejection due to perceived "rushing" and lack of charisma.

Throughout Season 5, Daughtry climbed and climbed as the show's resident "rock guy" in the stead of Season 4's Bo Bice, who lost only to Carrie Underwood. But where Bice was a shaggy Southern boy, Daughtry looked chiseled, streamlined and severe, a quintessential modern rocker rather than a throwback. While he wound up eliminated in fourth place, he had clear marketability outside of the show. Sure enough, his looks, voice and vibe carved his path into the majors.

Despite the occasional critical jeers and sheer number of chefs in the kitchen on Daughtry—plus, "I hate the way I sound" on that record, he says today—Daughtry felt validated by the response. Later, he said he harbored no fantasies of winning the show. "I don't know how it could have got any better," he expressed in a 2009 interview. "We've sold almost six million records. So I'm not sure where the title [of "Idol" winner] makes that any better."

"We have these conversations with the band all the time: They're like, 'Man, it obviously worked, whatever you were doing.'" Daughtry says today. "I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to critiquing myself. I'm very happy, obviously. I'm super pumped for what it did. And if that meant not knowing what I was doing and just going in there green and riding the wave of excitement, then so be it."

The band's second album, 2009's Leave This Town, was mostly in the aesthetic mold of its predecessor and landed in the ballpark of its sales. Still, getting there wasn't a given: There was every chance of it flopping. "Leave This Town was a very stressful record because we were right off the heels of major success with the first album," Daughtry recalls. "You can't help but feel this unspoken tension and pressure to do that again."

And in the end, "It did okay," he says. "It did one and a half million or so, but I felt like I got the record that I wanted. There was no songs thrown in last minute that I didn't write or something like that. Then I think it progressively got a little more trickier to navigate that balance of digging my heels and playing ball.

"There was a part of me that was also seeing a huge decline in record sales, and correlating that with my own creative relevance or abilities," he continues. "And me going, 'Well, maybe there is something to this. Maybe I do need to be paying attention to what other people are doing, and maybe I do need to be changing with the times.'"

When Daughtry listens to Leave This Town these days, he hears a guy beholden to his influences, yet inching toward his own style. "With a lot of artists that I can go back and listen to, you can hear their influences on their first record a lot more than records that proceed it," he says. "To me, I instantly hear who I was listening to at the time, as opposed to like, 'Oh yeah, that's just me.' But that's just me nitpicking. And I don't know if anybody else would hear it, but I definitely do."

His internal editor and nitpicker might make hay with Daughtry and Leave This Town, but Daughtry has special affection for the band's third record, 2011's Break The Spell. "I love that record," he says. "I had a blast making that one. I think that was one of the records that didn't have any real outside influence, but at the same time, didn't really... Well, it showed in the record sales. I didn't really have a lot of backing from the label either."

It's worth noting that Daughtry's career to date had been haunted by an endless parade of new A&R reps, all subjecting him to a new and confusing vision of the band before dematerializing and being replaced just as quickly—rinse and repeat. 

"With different A&R people, you have different versions of who they think you are," he says, still sounding pained. "This person, they may think you're this kind of band. Nobody really got where to put us. Nobody understood it after our first two records. There was a lot of turnover at RCA and I think we had a different A&R person for every record."

"It was always trying to get to know the next person and trying to explain the type of record you wanted to make, he continues. "Then, in the middle of making one, you find yourself being like, "I don't know if this is what we were going after, but hey! We're playing ball here and everybody wants to make money and be successful.' So I definitely played my part just from being surrounded by peers saying 'Nobody's playing guitars on the radio now. You got to do this to stay relevant.'"

That Chicken Little-style harbinger of the "end of guitars" brought about Break The Spell's 2013 follow-up Baptized, an extremely commercial detour that remains the biggest sticking point for the singer. He's still audibly frustrated about that experience. "Looking back, there were moments where I'm like, 'Yeah, that missed the mark,'" he admits with a wince. "I can see why maybe we got a lot of flak from the fans on, especially, Baptized. That record was an... experiment, for sure."

Read More: Daughtry Is Reborn On Baptized

The band put most of their chips on the electro-pop single "Waiting for Superman," which seemed like a surefire slam dunk. "A&R at the time got more excited than I've ever seen an A&R person yet over a song," he says. "And you start to go, 'Oh. Well! if they're that excited, that must mean something good. It felt a little over-the-top pop for me, but I was playing ball. I was mesmerized by the hype that was going on around me."

That hype didn't translate into the marketplace, though: "Waiting for Superman" stalled out at No. 66 on Billboard's Hot 100. At this point, Daughtry's frustration reached its boiling point; the back-of-the-envelope calculus for success made no sense to him. "Wait a minute. I'm doing all the things they're saying to do to get this result, but A. they're not pushing it, B. we're not getting the results," he remembers thinking. "Why am I doing something that I don't fully believe in?"

The relative failure of the single catalyzed a period of depression for the singer. Why had he been signed in the first place if they didn't want him to be him? "I started going downward mentally," he says. "I started second-guessing myself as a writer and performer, and my relevance in this new world of music that I didn't quite understand from the time I started in 2006 to now. It just felt so foreign and different to me, and I wasn't doing what I naturally did, which was rock."

Daughtry fulfilled the band's RCA contract with 2018's Cage To Rattle, which the latest suit pitched to him as a return-to-form rock album. "He's like, 'We're going to f***ing make a rock record,' I'm like, 'Yes!' He's like, "Get [Kings of Leon producer] Jacquire King." I'm like, 'Yes!'" he remembers. "Then, a new A&R person comes in and trumps his say." At that deflating moment where he realized this record would be like the rest, Cage To Rattle began to float away from what Daughtry envisioned.

"They're saying, 'Oh man, you do this song, we're going to have a big hit,'" he says. "I'm like, 'I don't know.' I argued with them. I argued, I argued, I argued. I finally caved. The song did nothing and I was like, 'This is it. Once we're done, we're done. We're parting ways. If they don't take me up, I'm not going to be mad at this.'" In the end, Daughtry "parted ways mutually" with his label and management.

Fast-forward to 2020: As the COVID-19 pandemic became entangled with global racial protests, Daughtry looked at the world, examined his feelings and began to write. "I've never really been one to write about current events, never been a political person, never been anyone to be kind of moved by the things going on around me," he says. "This is the first time that I felt compelled to write how these things made me feel."

Such was the batch of songs that eventually comprised the liberated Dearly Beloved, which Daughtry calls "100 percent, hands down" his favorite record he's made. The single "World on Fire" especially carries the weight of his newfound introspection and world-weariness.

"Right before the s*** hit the fan, Australia was on fire," Daughtry says. And I remember being in the studio and we were just scrolling through Instagram as we do right before a session—we're having our coffee just looking through the news or whatever—and I just remember going, 'Dude, literally, the world is on fire. No matter where you turn, something is totally f***ed.'" And I think [producer] Marti [Frederiksen] was like, "'World on Fire,' man. That's a good song title."

Daughtry

Daughtry. Photo: Sara Fish

Whether or not the glitchy, stadium-scaled rock on Dearly Beloved is your cup of tea, there's a poignant thrill to hearing an artist break out of his industry fetters and do exactly what they want to do. In the videos for both "World On Fire" and "Heavy Is The Crown," Daughtry is cast as a Jack Reacher-style action hero fending off a cabal of shadowy, suited baddies with choreographed moves, which seems pretty biographical. Semi-inscrutably, both end with the same disclaimer: "To be continued."

But those three words seem to sum up Daughtry, who despite commanding millions of fans worldwide, has spent 15 years in the business clearing his throat so he can finally do what he wants to do: Be a rock 'n' roll singer, full stop. Given a crystal ball, is there anything he would tell his 25-year-old self, who, for better or worse, was about to be fed into the thresher of the music business?

"I would say have a clear vision," he concludes. "Because if you don't, someone's going to give you one."

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Tedeschi Trucks Band

(L-R) Derek Trucks, Trey Anastasio, Susan Tedeschi 

Photo: Dave Vann

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Derek Trucks On Tedeschi Trucks Band's 'Layla Revisited' Concert Album: "There Are Some Nights You Feel Like You Can Play Anything"

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Two years ago, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and Phish's Trey Anastasio covered Derek and the Dominos' 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs' live in full. Now, as gigs fire up again, the Tedeschi Trucks Band is sharing the smoking results
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 15, 2021 - 10:48 am

The band Derek and the Dominos launched a generation of guitarists, but they arguably only launched one full-fledged human being. "I was named after that record," the two-time GRAMMY-winning guitar slinger Derek Trucks told JamBands soon after performing their sole studio album, 1970's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, front to back at a festival.

The connections didn't stop there, though: One of his earliest memories is of the LP leaning against—true to Duane Allman's involvement—a peach crate. The GRAMMY-winning singer/guitarist Susan Tedeschi, his wife and creative partner in the Tedeschi Trucks Band, was born on the very day it was released. "I was named after this thing; she was born on the day," Trucks continued. "Pretty good stuff!"

With almost no rehearsal, Tedeschi, Trucks and their pal, Trey Anastasio of Phish, convened to perform Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs at Lockn', an annual jam-band bash known for unique pairings. The result—after a gig-free year and a half—is Layla Revisited (Live at Lockn'), a document of that unrepeatable evening, due out July 16 via Fantasy Records, that will blow your hair back.

Whether together or separately, Tedeschi and Trucks had performed in various settings some of the Eric Clapton-led band's tunes, like "Bell Bottom Blues," "Keep on Growing" and the classic "Layla," Clapton's wounded howl to his BFF George Harrison's then-wife, Pattie Boyd. Trucks had even shared stages with the Strat man known to some as "God," peppering him with requests to perform some of the tunes.

"He had a funny response at one point," Trucks tells GRAMMY.com. "He was like, 'I didn't know people really like that [Derek and the Dominos] record. It seemed like the record that kind of flew by.'" On the contrary, Clapper: Most people think it's your best work. And now, two of your finest protoges are making sure rock fans in the 21st century know it.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Trucks while on the road with Tedeschi Trucks Band to discuss his lifelong relationship with Layla, how the tribute concert came about and why—true to the one-and-done band—they may never try this album onstage again.

Tell me about your history with Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

It's one of those records that's always been a huge presence from the very beginning. I've had connections with some of the tunes over the years, whether it was playing with my solo band or the Allmans or, eventually, with Eric. But I never sat down to learn the whole thing! [Chuckles.] It was really nice to finally dig into something that had always been there. You uncover more and more the deeper you go into something like that.

I remember that album cover as one of my first memories. It's a striking image—when I was growing up with parents who had vinyl leaning against peach crates in the living room. It's the first stuff you see, so it was a strange thing to eventually play some of that music with Eric in London. I remember Pattie Boyd—"Layla"—came out to one of the shows. A lot of it felt full-circle along the way, but finally playing the whole record felt like something that maybe we needed to do at some point.

To you, is the essence of the record the interplay between Eric and Duane?

That's a lot of it. You can feel what Eric was going through the more you dig into the lyrics of the record and the whole thing. But I think some of it was when you start learning all those guitar parts, you kind of start imagining the way the songs were written. There's a lot of open tunings and capoed guitars and little quirky s**t that just I never thought to dig into. 

You realize he was probably listening to a lot of singer/songwriters at the time. Some of it almost feels like that Tulsa, Western-swing thing. It feels like a different era for him. It wasn't just straight Bluesbreakers stuff. You can tell they were getting into some other things. That's one of the things I noticed digging into the tunes, but definitely, the Eric-and-Duane interplay and that connection.

From what I hear, Eric was excited about the Dominos and they were writing tunes, but the record wasn't really getting off the ground in the way they had hoped. When Duane stepped in out of the blue, the whole thing took on a different life. But also, from what I hear, Duane was that kind of character. He came into the room with the pedal pretty much to the floor. That's how he operated. 

It was this perfect collision. They met at the right time and this amazing thing happened.

What weird little quirks did you find? I'm sure as with many other albums of the era, there are things that wouldn't fly in a studio today.

Yeah, totally. All the best s**t is kind of made that way. You don't think about what it takes to get there; you just hear something in your head and figure it out. 

Even digging into a tune like "Thorn Tree in the Garden," me and Sue recorded it, and I always imagined it sounds like a few people in a room playing and singing. There's at least a third guitar in there. There's one that's just kind of pedaling the harmonics and there's guitars that are not doing much, but if you take that little piece away, you all of a sudden notice that it changes the whole movement of the thing. 

"I Am Yours" is a really uniquely constructed song. You wouldn't pick up a guitar and start strumming those first-position cowboy chords. That's a different way of going about it.

I think you're right on the money by implying that it's not a traditional 12-bar blues album. As you said, there are those cowboy chords and singer/songwriter influences.

Yeah. But then when it's time, it goes straight 12-bar! They're like, "Oh yeah, and then there's this. Let's not forget where it came from." It's a pretty amazing balance in that way.

I'm sure Eric has told you stories about this record.

When I was out with him, I was certainly lobbying to play some of those tunes. He had a funny response at one point. He was like, "I didn't know people really like that [Derek and the Dominos] record. It seemed like the record that kind of flew by." Obviously, "Layla" became the song of the record. But I was like, "No, that's the one, man. That's the one everyone goes to!"

I've noticed that when we did the Mad Dogs and Englishmen thing with Leon Russell, some of these seminal records don't feel that way to the artist when they do them, because maybe it wasn't received that way when it came out. That's your impression of it, and then you just move on down the road and have bigger hits with other things. It doesn't dawn on you that this is the one people really come back to. [Laughs.] So, I thought that was an interesting revelation.

Your Layla concert took place in 2019. Why, at that stage in the arc of your development, did it feel right to tackle that whole record and make a live album out of it?

It was specific to that festival. Every time we play Lockn', part of the thing that makes that festival unique is that they try to pair artists and have these big collaborations. They reached out about doing a few nights with me and Trey—me sitting in with his band one night and him sitting in with our band one night. 

When we were bouncing around ideas, I thought maybe some of the Dominos tunes would be fun, and he had a list of tunes of ours that might be fun to play. We were in Red Rocks, I was about to get on the phone with Trey about finalizing the set, and I mentioned to a friend of mine that we might play a few Dominos tunes, and she was like, "You should just do the whole f***ing record!" [Laughs.] 

Right when she said it, it felt like the most obvious thing in the world. It wasn't something I ever thought we would do. It wasn't something that was long-planned. It was just kind of an idea that made sense. And then the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I remember when I mentioned it to [Trey], that was a record he had studied and listened to a bunch. Susan has an amazing connection to that music too. So, it felt like home at that point.

What was involved in learning the songs and preparing for the gig? I don't know if you had the multitrack—if you could hear the guitars layer by layer.

He was on the road, I believe, and we were on the road pretty nonstop, so it was everyone in their headphones just listening as we were out doing other things. We didn't have any access to anything other than the same material [everyone has]. It was just a lot of listening. Everyone in our band really did our homework and dug into it and [dedicated] a few soundchecks to working up a song at a time.

It was really one full rehearsal with Trey in New York City and then a little half-day of rehearsal when [guitarist] Doyle [Bramhall II] showed up on-site at Lockn'. It came together pretty quickly once everyone was there. When Doyle finally showed up, he was that last ingredient. He had played with Eric so long and I'd played with Doyle together with Eric, so some of those parts fell right into place. 

He's a master of putting things where they need to be. You almost don't notice they're there, but you notice if it's not there. [Laughs.] When Doyle stepped in, I knew the set was going to feel good. It went off, right out of the gate, better than any of us could have hoped, from the first note. 

You could tell there were good nerves onstage from the first song. You can feel everyone's excitement about what we were doing. A few songs in, you can feel that the energy shifted where everyone was fully in it and letting it fly. There are some nights you feel like you can play anything. You don't have to think about it at all. It got to that place, which is rare when you're not doing material you know all that well. 

That was nice, you know? You hope it's going to go off that way. It doesn't always go off that way. It's refreshing to know it wasn't just the energy of the crowd or the excitement of doing it, but it actually held up when we listened back to it. You never know. 

Sometimes, you play a show you think is great, then you go back months or even years later and you go "Well, maybe it'd be more fun if you were there." This one had a different feel to it, and it held up.

Is this the only time you and Susan have performed it in full?

Yeah, and I think it's probably the only time we will do it that way. There's something special about keeping it to that.

Well, it's like the band itself. One and done. Get in and get out.

Totally. Don't let anything f*** up your legacy!

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