SNAILS 

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SNAILS On His DJ Battle With Gud Vibrations At Lolla '19

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"It's a dream coming true, it's pretty insane," the Canadian DJ told the Recording Academy
Jennifer Velez
GRAMMYs
Aug 9, 2019 - 1:45 pm

DJ and producer SNAILS did his first-ever back-to-back DJ collab set with his label, Slugz Music, for a battle set against Gud Vibrations, a.k.a. NGHTMRE & SLANDER at Lollapalooza 2019.

Aug 9, 2019 – 1:40 pm

SNAILS On His DJ Battle With NGHTMRE & SLANDER

"It's a dream coming true, it's pretty insane," the Canadian DJ said after the set. "It was cool sharing the stage with them. It was the first time ever, so it was a big moment for us."

Watch the entire interview above.

Lauv On "F**k, I'm Lonely," Staying Independent, Mental Health & More

Nicholas Britell

Photo by Dominic Nicholls

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Nicholas Britell On Scoring 'Succession' And 'The King' & Learning From Steve McQueen

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The Emmy-winning composer talks to the Recording Academy about moving between film and television, working with auteurs like Adam McKay and Barry Jenkins and more
GRAMMYs
Sep 18, 2019 - 10:58 am

It's safe to say that Nicholas Britell is living the dream—his dream, at least. "Ever since I was five years old, I loved movies and I loved music," the 38-year-old film and TV composer tells the Recording Academy over the phone. "As a composer, the dream is that you can write things and that people can feel the things that you're feeling."

That's exactly what Britell’s work does: It stirs up feelings, whether it’s the bittersweet strings that adorn director Barry Jenkins' 2018 tragic romance If Beale Street Could Talk, or the cascading pianos that usher viewers into the rareified air of the Roy family, the dysfunctional super-wealthy clan at the hardened heart of HBO's Succession. Britell's ear and knack for translating emotion have helped him build quite an impressive IMDb page over the past few years. He's collaborated with some of the most respected filmmakers active today—Jenkins, Steve McQueen, Adam McKay—which means his songs have appeared in two of this decade’s Best Picture winners (McQueen's 12 Years A Slave and Jenkins' Moonlight). Britell has earned some awards attention of his own, as well; he's been nominated for two Oscars for Best Original Score (for Moonlight and Beale Street, respectively) and, more recently, took home a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music (for Succession, naturally). Odds are, if you have any friends who spend too much time on Film Twitter, they're fans of his.

The Recording Academy chatted with Britell about working alongside a series of auteurs, his score for the second season of Succession (which is presently dominating the TV discourse online), and his compositions for the upcoming Henry V-centric film The King, set to hit theaters on Oct. 11 before debuting on Netflix on Nov. 1. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

To start at the beginning of your recent run: What was it like being a young composer, working on a film as heavy and sobering as 12 Years A Slave and working with a master like Steve McQueen? 

Steve is incredible. It was truly inspiring and really a life-changing experience for me, to work closely with an artist like Steve, and to learn from him and just to see the way that he approaches things, his decision-making process, the way that he thinks about artistic choices. I often think back on that experience and I’ve stayed in close touch with Steve, and he’s been a very dear friend as well, since then. 

On IMDb, it says "Additional music" for your credit on 12 Years A Slave. Can you clarify: What was your level of involvement? You didn't handle all of the scoring, but you did some of it? 

Actually, I wasn't involved in the score of 12 Years A Slave. I wrote and researched and arranged all of the music that appears on-camera in the film. 

All of the diegetic music.

Exactly, all of the diegetic music. Everything from working with Chiwetel [Ejiofor] and coordinating, researching the type of fiddle tunes that an African-American violinst in 1841 in New York state might have played. Everything from that to exploring the field songs and dances in the South and collaborating with Steve on figuring out the best way to execute those performances. It was actually a huge research endeavor to figure out what's possible to be known about those types of performances and music, and also what are the limits of our knowledge on that. 

You've also collaborated with Barry Jenkins, who has such a distinct visual style, obviously, and favors a lot of close-ups of his characters, a lot of eye contact. What's it like composing for sequences and shots that are so direct, where the audience and the performer are both so vulnerable? 

One of the things about Barry's filmmaking style is that he creates a very full, rich aesthetic experience for the films that he makes. What you’re talking about, that sort of directness, is really emblematic of the way that he approaches all of the departments of the films: the colors, the cinematography, the music, the sound. There is a directness and a boldness with his choices, but it’s all in service of the feeling. A lot of what we’re trying to do, from my perspective, it’s about finding musical landscapes that can convey those feelings and the fullness of those feelings. 

And every film is different. There's no right score for something, there's just the score that you craft in collaboration with the director, at that moment in time. There are lots of possible scores, but I think one of the beautiful things about scoring is that it's so dependent on the process, and how it comes together, and that's what makes it unique to that film. Above all, it’s about finding a sound that feels like—for you and for the director—that it’s really woven into the fabric of the movie somehow. Some things just feel connected, in a way, and some don't. We ourselves don't really know, and the process is us experimenting together. 

You've also worked on two films with Adam McKay, who's an executive produer on Succession. Can you talk about how you got invovled with the show specifically? 

Well, actually, Succession was a result of those two films. I first worked with Adam on The Big Short, and it was after we finished The Big Short that we talked about Succession, and he told me about the premise and the ideas behind the show and asked if I wanted to be a part of the pilot, and of course I said yes. It was quite a few years ago, actually. My mental calendar is sort of a blur—but we did the pilot and I worked on that and then it was after the pilot, after some time, we then did the rest of the series and put it all together. 

I started talking to Adam about it before they shot the pilot and was able to go to set and be there for when they were shooting the pilot, which, it’s always a great experience because you get to see things up close. So, it directly came out of that experience of first working with Adam on The Big Short. I finished scoring Succession, the first season, while we were making Vice, actually, so I was doing those in parallel to some extent. 

The goal for me musically was that it had both this kind of gravitas to the seriousness of that world, which is—it’s a real issue in the world, that there are these increasing concentrations of wealth and power amongst fewer and fewer people. There's a darkness there, but there’s also this absurdity and I think that finding a tone that could balance both of those things was really the key. And it was very interesting, actually, working on Vice at the same time, because I feel working with Adam has been so crucial for me as a learning experience, too, and thinking about that interplay between drama and comedy.

How has the Succession score changed or developed from season one to season two? 

Season one really laid the groundwork for the thematic ideas and for the tone. Season two, I think it was really important for me that as the story evolved, I definitely wanted the music to continue its own evolution. I remember talking to Jesse [Armstrong, creator and showrunner of Succession] about this idea of, "Imagine a symphony that is Succession, what's the second movement sound like? What do we do?"

Also, you never want to overstay your welcome with certain musical ideas. There's definitely a sort of dark, maniacal streak to some of the music, and I want to make sure that when we’re using certain ideas, that we know exactly where and they have a power still. There’s certain new elements for Kendall, there are certain elements that are Shiv-focused. It’s the same Succession universe, but hopefully a bit more. 

How does working on a TV show compare to working on a feature-length film? 

The difference between film and TV is pretty large, actually. There's just so much more real estate in TV. Certainly, there's the micro-level approach, which is thinking episode to episode. But I really try to think about it as one entire piece, in a way. So, you're always thinking about, "Where do certain ideas get seeded, where do certain ideas come back? How does what we hear in episode one impact what we hear in episode 10?" It's actually quite challenging to think about that. 

That's something that I really love about film music, is thinking about the architecture of the ideas, like, where you start one idea and then how does it evolve, how does it change, where does it come back? And also, importantly, where do you not have music? That’s always really important, too. Each film has its own musical logic, and you’re trying to have the film tell you where it needs music and where it doesn't want music. 

You just won a Creative Arts Emmy for the Succession theme. There's always so much talk about awards campaigning, mostly about the Oscars. What does campaigning look like for a film composer? And how does it differ between the Oscars and the Emmys? 

I’m new to the TV world a bit. The film awards season and that process is very linked with the release of those films, so I view it very much as you're participating in helping bringing the film into the world. I remember last year, with Beale Street for example, it wasn’t even so much necessarily campaigning as it was, we would do a lot of Q&As at movie theaters, and really be there sharing what the story of the film is. 

With TV, actually, I haven’t done quite as much, I guess. In the sense that that kind of natural, going to movie theaters and doing Q&As and stuff, there really isn't as much of that. And I think that’s partly also just the nature of the medium. Which, I would actually add to that and say that I've been really awed by the level of audience that is possible from television. I love movies, and I love the movie theater experience, but I also think it is a wonderful thing that television is actually able to get out to more people, and more people, on a weekly basis, can participate in the stuff that you’re making. That’s been something of a new experience that I’ve had with working on a TV show. 

You worked on a film that's coming out in October, The King. Did you have to get into a dramatically different headspace as a composer, working on something that’s set that far back in the past? 

I definitely did not change my process. When I approach a new project, I try to have a blank slate in a way, where you’re trying to be open to feeling what that film or that series need in the way of music, and seeing what that is. Obviously, you don’t figure that out without talking to the director, and having that conversation: What are they feeling and what are they looking for? 

I remember with The King, the first thought that I had when I saw a rough cut of the movie was, "What would it be like if I imagined that the 1400s was actually like the 2500s?" You say to yourself, "What is that sort of sense of distance and time mean?" So I tried to create sounds early on that felt like they could be linked with the world that we were witnessing, but that also felt like they weren’t necessarily "period." I was very specifically not trying to say, "All of these instruments are from 1413."

So, the sound that I settled on, working with David [Michôd, director of The King], was this sound where it's a mixture of these bass clarinets that I pitched through this sort of tape filter that created a very strange texture. And then there’s the sound of a boys' choir, which emerges over the course of the film, and there's definitely some symbolism there, emotionally and musically, with the fact that this is a young man who is becoming king. And there were a lot of musical experiments that we did, too, with morphing some brass and morphing these sort of metallic sounds. I think it's about creating something that makes you lean into this world, to want to explore it—but at the same time, you need something that feels like it connects with you.        

I've seen a lot of people tweeting about your music, saying things like, "Just working all day to the Beale Street soundtrack." I imagine that if you're a film composer, it'd be rewarding to put your music out, but there would maybe be this fear that your work would be entombed with the movie it's for, just inseprarable from it. But it seems like people are more than happy to associate your compositions with the films, but also to break them out and use them in their own lives. 

Well, thank you. I definitely feel like when I’m writing, it's very important that the music for film can exist both inside and outside the project. I think that's maybe a little bit of an aesthetic criteria for me, of whether something works. For any piece that I’m writing for a movie, the music has to be able to exist on its own, hopefully, as an idea. So, I do think about its ability to exist outside of the project, but certainly, the number one goal is that it's right for the project. That's its only reason for being there. 

Music Is Coming: Composer Ramin Djawadi Looks Back On Eight Epic Seasons Of 'Game Of Thrones'

Photo courtesy of Epix

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Swizz Beatz Talks Executive Producing The 'Godfather Of Harlem' Soundtrack: "It's Like Meeting Heritage With Today"

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Executive produced by Swizz Beatz and featuring music from Dave East, A$AP Ferg, Wale and more, the 'Godfather Of Harlem' soundtrack joins the past with the present, aligning history with an emotional undercurrent that resonates in the new millennium
Randee Dawn
GRAMMYs
Sep 17, 2019 - 12:59 pm

Flashback: It's 1963. It's Harlem, New York. Gangster Bumpy Johnson, freshly released from Alcatraz, has just made a handshake alliance with activist Malcolm X: they're going to use X's manpower and Johnson's guns to clean up a drug-infested part of the hood.

It's a scene straight out of Epix's new drama series Godfather Of Harlem (premiering Sept. 29), and while it might surprise a few viewers, what comes next is even more startling: the soundtrack kicks in. Dave East and A$AP Ferg kick it with a beat straight outta the future, with "Business is Business," a track that unspools with slick modern production and street-smart, trap-influenced rap vocals that are perfectly in sync with 2019—and yet, also 1963. It's a neat musical trick that joins the past with the present, aligning history with an emotional undercurrent that resonates in the new millennium.

But that was always the intention.

East and Ferg's tune are just one of 19 original compositions created specifically for Godfather, curated by executive producer Swizz Beatz as part of a rare undertaking in television: composing modern tunes for a series that takes place entirely in the past, a soundtrack designed to both draw in younger viewers and provide perspective on how the issues of yesterday remain the issues of today.

"The whole concept was to make the music have the heritage of the time period, but also give it a 'today' handshake," Beatz tells the Recording Academy. "It's like meeting heritage with today."

In Godfather, Johnson's goal is to reclaim Harlem from the Italian gangsters who are flooding the streets with drugs. This sets him on a collision course with Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, but also ensures he crosses paths with the civil rights movement and historical figures like X and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. The story may be based in the '60s (each season's time period is set to advance by one year) but the messages about racism and civil rights echo loudly today—something star Forest Whitaker (Johnson) and Beatz wanted reflected in the soundtrack.

Still, it's not just about creating new hip-hop tunes; the Godfather soundtrack dabbles in a number of genres and styles to make its point.

"The show allows us to look at today through the prism of the past," says the Academy Award-winning Whitaker, who is also executive producing the series. "The marriage of those two things is important, and it's important to do it in an organic way. Swizz has an openness to the whole tapestry of the universe, and you can't pigeonhole this music. It has so many different influences—from pop to reggae to hip-hop."

Bringing Beatz on to oversee the curation of the soundtrack made sense on a number of levels. The GRAMMY-winning producer born Kasseem Dean has worked as a producer on Empire and has been contributing songs to soundtracks for 20 years. But Godfather was a much bigger project, and required a new way of thinking about adding music to a TV series.

"Normally, for a first season TV show you don't do a ground-up new soundtrack," says music supervisor Stephanie Diaz-Matos, who worked alongside Beatz to make all the pieces fit together. "We finished editing several episodes and were able to look at it as a movie instead of an hour at a time and say holistically, 'This is what we need.'"

The result: a musically diverse set of tunes written specifically for particular scenes and montages that are meant to weave the sound as tightly into the story as the dialogue. Artists including Skip Marley and French Montana, Cruel Youth, Jidenna, Sean Cross, Samm Henshaw, Savage, Rick Ross and John Legend have all contributed original bespoke songs (Beatz contributes solo tunes while landing credit on several others) to the soundtrack, which will be released concurrent with the series. Two tunes, "Just In Case" by Swizz Beatz, Rick Ross and DMX and "Hallelujah" by Buddy, A$AP Ferg, and Wale dropped at digital retailers on Aug. 30. Further tunes will be released the Friday before each episode premieres, with a full soundtrack also planned.

"I'm bringing musical characters to actual visual characters," explains Beatz. "For me, the whole thing is to make you feel the characters and the music and be emotionally attached."

"You're going to hear Latin, Afrobeats—all styles of music," says Diaz-Matos. "We didn't rely just on trap, which is the sound that's the most streamed style of music at the moment—there's blends of all kinds of rhythms and textures and voices. We're speaking to being based in Harlem."

One additional unique element to the soundtrack is the way in which it was created. Epic Records EVP of A&R Zeke Lewis explains that he and Epic chair/CEO and industry veteran Sylvia Rhone coordinated an "elaborate writing trip" to Beatz' Jungle Studios in New York City, where over the course of two weeks writers worked simultaneously in different rooms to create the tracks that would go with the selected scenes.

"99 percent of the artists came in and worked in the studio with us," says Beatz. "Everybody was part of the energy. We had like five different rooms going, and I was bouncing in and out of the rooms. We were letting people do what they do and getting direction—and it really worked. You have to have everybody under the same roof to have that energy."

Whitaker, who regularly vetted the remixes and different score pieces, also showed up at Jungle from time to time, says Lewis. "He came to the studios with us, met every artist on the soundtrack and we were able to dig into the specificity of the show so the music would fit to a T. The music is such an important companion piece to the visual—I couldn't imagine one without the other."

The "writing camp," as showrunner Chris Brancato calls it, was a revelation. "I realized a music producer is a showrunner of the music," he says. "Swizz did a lot of the things a showrunner does to get great outputs from his talented collaborators—and this was a new experience for me, watching all these artists collaborating under Swizz' direction."

In addition to the bespoke songs, there's plenty of period-specific music in the series, plus a score from GRAMMY winner Mark Isham; episodes frequently feature of-the-era concert performances. But in many ways the original songs shine the brightest, and are perhaps ushering in a new era for hip-hop's role on soundtracks.

"This is 100 percent a new maturity level," says Lewis. "This is not just taking a hot rapper and trying to attach a song to a soundtrack. This is a surgically orchestrated hip-hop masterwork from Swizz Beatz and team. This is sophisticated hip-hop."

And of course it helps provide an entry point for younger viewers who might not immediately turn to a historical series—even if it does feature Whitaker and lots of snazzy gunplay and dialogue. "You want to open the tent to the widest possible audience," says Brancato. "A contemporary soundtrack can attract a younger audience—and an audience around the world."

Whether all these lofty ambitions lead to charting hits, bigger ratings—or a Season 2 sequel soundtrack—remains to be seen, though Beatz says he's on board if there is a second collection to be curated. "Every season we get to change the landscape because the year [in which the show takes place] changes," he says. "When the story changes, it gets more interesting every time."

"Music is an essential element of the African-American experience in this country," says Brancato. "Whether it's slave anthems or gospel music or church-inspired music—all of it plays a part in giving people hope, sustenance and aspiration to become part of the fabric that is America."

New Linda Ronstadt Documentary Shows The Dynamic Singer's True Essence

Ric Ocasek

Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

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Ric Ocasek Made Everything Cool—Including Himself

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From his career with the Cars to his collaborations with younger acts, the late frontman made new wave cool by making sure it still rocked
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Sep 16, 2019 - 3:50 pm

Ric Ocasek's introduction to the world was morse code: chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-CHUNK / chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-CHUNK-CHUNK. Those opening notes of the Cars' first single "Just What I Needed" were telegraphing something small and then something BIG! And then something small again, and then BIG! BIG! The instant rock-radio classic oscillated freely between the two modes, and so did its mastermind. Together with Blondie's iconic Debbie Harry, the spindly, jitter-voiced Ocasek turned the beginnings of new wave—a hybrid of punk's flat, minimalist drive, and art-rock's burgeoning love affair with the synthesizer—into an even more ambitious combination of both "cool" and "pop." His thin, strange voice echoed forebears like Todd Rundgren (who'd go on to lead a not-well-liked version of the Cars eventually) and Television's Tom Verlaine, but this time it was attached something far more sleek and marketable. Like a car, actually.

Let's not put that one aside; fewer band names had a better fit for the product they were selling. From the opening chirps of The Cars' "Good Times Roll," their debut album caught hold through engine-like repetition that built up steam into power-pop choruses. And they were humorous; they named a song "Drive," one of their biggest hits. But Ocasek proved you didn’t have to emote to be human. His greatest moment was "My Best Friend's Girl," a huge Cars hit that ostensibly lamented an old rock'n'roll subject, losing his girlfriend. But any aloneness on the verses was cut by bandmates like his lifelong friend Benjamin Orr on the exultant chorus. He sounded almost happy. To inhabit Ocasek's sound was to dress up in cool until it fit you like a glove. So if he was going to turn his breakup into a party, one he maybe even invited the title ex to ("I kinda like the way she dips!" he yelps at one point), then so be it.

Of course, this then-novel inversion of nerd power was more musical than anything else, so the two best moments in "My Best Friend's Girl" are telling: the jangly post-chorus riff that Ocasek nipped wholesale from the Beatles' "I Will," (from the same spot, too!) and the moment when the drums first kick in and an arcade game dies a triumphant death in synth form. He made a shiny, spotless future out of the indelible past. Pulled the same trick again in 1994 when he produced a similarly downstroke-obsessed band called Weezer's eponymous debut, too. "Buddy Holly" even brought the vacuum-sealed synths.

By then, this is what he was most known for as both bandleader and producer: giving squares the aural equivalent of hot wheels. Not only did Ocasek design the sound of Weezer's two shiniest albums (the underrated 'green' album is even more Cars-like) but also Nada Surf’s "Popular," a light high school satire espousing the proper etiquette to address "Johnny Football Hero" by. But he played both sides of the fence, producing Romeo Void's lasciviously bored smash "Never Say Never" (you know, "I might like you better if we slept together") just a year before he helmed Bad Brains' hardcore totem Rock For Light at their 1983 rawest. He worked with art-droners Suicide and DIY punk mainstays Bad Religion. He blurred the lines by taking the legendarily cheaply recorded Guided By Voices hi-fi in 1999 (don't sleep on "Surgical Focus").

In all of his endeavors, Ocasek was like those ZZ Top videos where the trio magically appeared to bestow some unlucky loser with a sweet ride and videogenic babes, except he was ZZ Top, the loser, and the car. He willed himself onto the charts and below at his leisure. And that indefatigable quality permeated all six of his albums with the Cars, especially Candy-O, which doubled down on the girl-crazy debut, and Heartbeat City, on which a rising "Mutt" Lange power-tooled the Cars into high-powered Batmobiles. By then, he'd bent new wave, and essentially, rock and pop, to his whims, replicating the staunch rhythms of the Velvet Underground and Def Leppard from the same ingredient.

Ric Ocasek wrote, sang and produced great songs, made his prolific time in the spotlight look easy, and stumbled into sex symbol-ism and power-couple-ism with his longtime wife Paulina Porizkova, all from behind huge sunglasses that let you know he was living his damn life. A quick spin through The Cars' Greatest Hits reminds us how often he let us in on the fun.

Ric Ocasek, Lead Singer Of The Cars, Dies At 75

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Yesterday Once More (Twice Over): An Oral History Of The 1994 Carpenters Tribute Album, 'If I Were A Carpenter'

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25 years after the release of Carpenters tribute album 'If I Were A Carpenter', the Recording Academy speaks to those involved about the project's legacy
Will Hodge
GRAMMYs
Sep 13, 2019 - 9:26 am

In popular culture, the cyclical adage "Everything old is new again" is often embodied in the form of the tribute album—an unwieldy vehicle of veneration whose success lies as much with the source material as with those interpreting it. A tribute album’s chances of hitting that sonic sweet spot are also enhanced when it follows the loosely structured (and hotly debated) 20-year nostalgia cycle—the idea that one’s generational fads of music, fashion, technology, books, slang and other cultural touchstones resurface after a couple decades (give or take) of mainstream dormancy. With its roster of 1990s alternative music rabble-rousers celebrating the 1970s clean-cut, musical prodigy duo The Carpenters, the left-of-center tribute album If I Were A Carpenter wonderfully delivers on these concepts in spades.    

This month marks 25 years since the release of If I Were A Carpenter, providing a nice echo of its origins, as the tribute album was initially conceived as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of The Carpenters' debut album, Offering. On its surface, the idea of rowdy alt-rockers running bubbly Carpenters songs through cranked guitars and buzzy amplifiers might've seemed like nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek goof. As KROQ’s music director Darcy Fulmer said of the album at the time, "It shows that people who like alternative music liked dork music when they were little, too."

However, the story behind If I Were A Carpenter involves no winks or chuckles. In fact, it's downright irony-free. It was a labor of love hatched by two longtime friends, Matt Wallace and Dave Konjoyan, who bonded over their love of the exemplary music crafted by the sibling duo of Karen and Richard Carpenter. Both ended up working in the music industry—Dave as a music journalist and Matt as a record producer—and when they first started working on the idea for a Carpenters tribute album, they ended up wrangling a disparate group of alternative artists, punk bands and college-rock crooners who all seemed to share in their genuine affinity for The Carpenters' inescapably infectious pop perfection.

To salute two-and-a-half decades of the If I Were A Carpenter tribute album (as well as 50 years of The Carpenters' own musical magic), the Recording Academy conducted an oral history featuring the album's co-producers Matt Wallace and Dave Konjoyan, legendary songwriter (and Carpenters collaborator) Paul Williams, and many of the artists involved, including Matthew Sweet, Johnette Napolitano, Grant-Lee Phillips, members of The Cranberries, Cracker, Dishwalla and more.

Matt Wallace (co-producer): Dave and I met in Physical Education class in high school and became friends after we bonded over singing Carpenters songs in the locker room one day. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do at that moment in time because there was probably no quicker way to get your ass kicked in high school during the 1970s, other than to maybe sing Barry Manilow songs. Fast forward to the early '90s, Dave brought up the idea of this tribute record to me because I had produced some big records for Faith No More and The Replacements, as well as a few bands on A&M Records, which The Carpenters had been on. We pitched it to A&M and thankfully got the greenlight.

Dave Konjoyan (co-producer): I was doing some music journalism at the time and I was noticing a lot of artists were expressing appreciation for The Carpenters, especially for Karen's voice. It was artists like Chrissie Hynde, k.d. lang, Sonic Youth, Babes In Toyland and a few others. Tribute albums were also starting to really become a bigger thing, so I thought there might be enough artists interested in doing one dedicated to The Carpenters.

Matt Wallace (co-producer): The contrast of the impeccably arranged, glossy pop of The Carpenters with bands that were a little scrappier and less refined is what made it so interesting. You look at "Goodbye to Love" by American Music Club or "Superstar" by Sonic Youth or "Rainy Days And Mondays" by Cracker and you get these dark readings of the songs that feel really aligned with how Karen was singing them and how she was probably feeling at the time. Though, to flip that, some of the bands also did really well at turning in brighter versions of what The Carpenters did, like the beautiful version of "Close To You" by The Cranberries and "Top of the World" by Shonen Knife. 

Dave Konjoyan (co-producer): A&M might've been interested in us pursuing a more mainstream group of artists, but from the beginning the concept for Matt and I was always the alternative band route. A lot of bands on the record—Sonic Youth, Sheryl Crow, The Cranberries, Babes In Toyland—are ones that we really targeted right from the beginning. We got a lot of artists agreeing to it right of the bat.

Matt Wallace (co-producer): We also had a couple bands—Smashing Pumpkins, Paul Westerberg, Stone Temple Pilots—that were really on board but just didn't work out due to scheduling conflicts or various other reasons. But I'm super pleased with all of the bands who participated and how it all turned out. I mean, Sonic Youth liking The Carpenters? That was mind-blowing to most people at the time.

All throughout the 1990s, there was a seemingly constant rotation of alt-friendly tribute albums dedicated to popular '70s artists: Kiss (1994's Kiss My Ass), Led Zeppelin (1995's Encomium), John Lennon (1995's Working Class Hero) and The Clash (1999's Burning London), just to name a few. There were even a couple alt-heavy tribute albums playfully dedicated to 1970s television, including 1995's Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits and 1996's Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks. Released in the fall of 1994, If I Were A Carpenter was certainly on the front end of that wave, an important note that helps contextualize the album's peculiar subject matter, its assorted roster and its unquestionably raucous-yet-reverent tone.

David Lowery (Cracker): When I first heard about the opportunity of being a part of a Carpenters tribute album, I thought it was kind of odd and cool. Like, who is thinking about The Carpenters right now? Stacked up against some of the other tribute records of the time, The Carpenters seemed like a much less obvious choice and that made it more interesting to us. They were one of my guilty pleasures that weren't exactly in vogue in the early '90s.

Matthew Sweet: The Carpenters were kind of omnipresent when I was a kid. You heard them whether you were seeking them out or not. Both Karen and Richard were so talented and their catalog provided such a wealth of material for this tribute record to pull from.

Fergal Lawler (The Cranberries): I thought The Carpenters were great. They made fantastic, heartfelt songs that still sound great today. They were actually really big in Ireland. We definitely heard them on the radio all the time, especially "Close To You."

Naoko Yamano (Shonen Knife): Since I'm Japanese and can't understand their English lyrics very well, it was their sound that really reached my mind. But that was enough because their melody lines and Karen's vocals were so attractive to me. Their song "Sing" was in one of our school textbooks, so I thought that their music was only for good children. My friends liked them, though.

Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde): I was so happy to be able to be a part of this record because The Carpenters absolutely owned AM radio during my junior high and high school years. Richard's certainly a talented arranger, but for me it was really all about Karen. Karen’s voice was so incredibly soulful and totally made for radio. You hear a hundred voices when you hear her sing. Plus, she could really play the drums, which is not something you saw women doing at the time.

J. R. Richards (Dishwalla): The Carpenters were cool because there was such a weird, darker tinge underneath all of the beautiful background vocals and lovely sentiments. I really liked the juxtaposition they brought to their songs.

Mark Eitzel (American Music Club): When we first got asked to be involved, I was like "Absolutely, I love The Carpenters!" They made incredible records. For all the schlock that you would hear on the radio at the time, they never offended me. Their songs were so well written, perfectly arranged, and just sung so beautifully.

Grant-Lee Phillips (Grant Lee Buffalo): For me and for so many other bands of that era, The Carpenters were the music of our childhood. The '70s were a mixed bag. It was the age of the superstar and it was gaudy. There was a strange patriotic flair juxtaposed against scandal and violence. Yet, here was this duo trying to breakthrough with some light in a very bizarre and clouded era. I vividly remember being a kid and riding around in the car with my mom singing along to The Carpenters. They were really close to me, no pun intended.     

On the combined strength of Richard's instrumental prowess and Karen's soulful three-octave contralto (as well as her complex, skilled drumming), The Carpenters released 14 studio albums and over 40 singles—many of which attained platinum-selling status and reached the top of the charts in multiple countries. Their biggest Billboard Hot 100 hit singles—"(They Long To Be) Close To You," "We’ve Only Just Begun," "Rainy Days And Mondays," "Superstar," "Top of the World," "Please Mr. Postman"—charted in the early '70s, but the sibling duo released albums, produced television specials, and remained a fixture on Top 40 radio all the way up until Karen’s untimely death in 1983 from anorexia-induced heart failure. As The Carpenters legacy has continually been reassessed over the years, it is Karen’s emotionally resonant vocals that remain the summit of their many creative talents.  

Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde): Karen was really something special and she just gave everything she had. She was a fragile wick that just burned herself all the way down and didn’t say no to anything. She was almost sacrificed in a way, but out of that came some of the most beautiful music to ever be recorded. 

Paul Williams (songwriter): The wonderful thing about the way Richard produced their albums was that with everything going on in the track—instrumentation, orchestration, the background harmonies—there was never anything that threw a shadow on Karen. Her vocals were kept front and center so you could experience the emotion they carried and the elegance of her voice that was such a hybrid of melancholy, sensuality and sadness.

Grant-Lee Phillips (Grant Lee Buffalo): Karen's voice was so gorgeously unique, the way she sang in that lower register. This tribute album is interesting because Karen had died just a little over a decade before and that strange grief was still somewhat in the air. It actually gave me some pause because I didn’t want to be disrespectful in any way.

Matt Wallace (co-producer): Karen's voice was one of the most incredible instruments of pop music ever. Her tone and her control were incredible, but it was also the subtext—that anybody who has ever had any feelings of melancholy or has been down, can really connect to it. As much as Richard tried to polish and create so much gloss and sheen to the instrumentation, the emotional resonance in her voice hit so deep and would not be denied.

When it came time for the bands involved to pick which Carpenters song they were going to perform, there was surprisingly little drama. While this could be somewhat expected from an artist's catalog as deep and rich as The Carpenters, it also speaks to the varied musical tastes of the bands paying tribute. Some artists like Matthew Sweet, Grant-Lee Phillips and The Cranberries delivered performances fairly true to the originals, while other artists like 4 Non Blondes, Babes In Toyland, Bettie Serveert and Sonic Youth took decidedly broader creative liberties. Others found a contrasting middle ground between the slick pop craftsmanship of the originals and their own sonic predilections.

Paul Williams (songwriter): Songs are not written in cement. They're just a starting place to bring your own emotions and express your own feelings through your own interpretations.             

Matt Wallace (co-producer): I love that most of the bands shifted towards the brooding, melancholy side of what The Carpenters did. Richard and Karen were more than just the bright, shiny, effervescent side of what they are sometimes most remembered for. Most of the bands were pretty flexible because we asked everyone to pick two or three songs. That way we could make sure to hopefully get at least one of their picks. Some of the bigger artists like Sheryl Crow or The Cranberries might’ve been able to pick theirs a little earlier.  

David Lowery (Cracker): I knew everyone was going to want to do "Superstar," but I've always loved "Rainy Days And Mondays." I’d like to say we were musical geniuses by discovering the beauty in giving it an even more down tempo groove, but what you hear on the recording is actually a take where we’re still learning the song. Bob Rupe, who was playing bass for us then, was walking us through the chord progression really slowly as we figured everything out. Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse was sitting in with us, just listening along and throwing a couple guitar lines in here and there. I think we also tried a more upbeat, alternative take on it that didn’t work as well. So, we went back to this warm-up take, added some strings and background vocals to it a couple weeks later, and it became this weird accidental hybrid that we just loved.

Naoko Yamano (Shonen Knife): We were shown two or three songs to cover and I firmly picked "Top of the World." There was no other choice for me. I really love that song and the melody lines are perfect.

"Songs are not written in cement. They're just a starting place to bring your own emotions and express your own feelings through your own interpretations."           

Fergal Lawler (The Cranberries): We picked "Close To You" and we were delighted when they said it was still available. I remember I had just heard a cover version of Smashing Pumpkins doing Thin Lizzy's "Dancing In The Moonlight" and I really loved their slowed down version of it, so I suggested we try it that way. I remember when Dolores [O'Riordan] was recording her vocals, she didn’t want to sing the line "They sprinkled moondust in your hair" because she thought it sounded a bit spacey. She felt a bit embarrassed about it, so she wanted to just kind of mumble her way through that part.

Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde): I was really hoping to get "Superstar" because I was really close with Leon Russell, who was one of the song's co-writers. I was pissed when Thurston [Moore] got it because it's a singer's song and he blows. But Marc Moreland and I had a lot of fun recording "Hurting Each Other." All the girls wore "Karen" nametags and all the guys wore "Richard" nametags. We rented concert chimes—the huge, six-foot tall brass tube kind that you hit with a hammer. That was when you could still smoke indoors, so I have this vivid memory of Marc Moreland in a cloud of smoke just banging on the concert chimes through all the guitar craziness at the end of the song. 

Matt Wallace (co-producer): I recorded Sheryl Crow doing "Solitaire" in Los Angeles because I was having to catch her between shows while she was touring in and out of Europe. I remember it took us three different studio sessions to get the exact vocals we wanted for her. For one of those sessions, she flew in from Germany, threw her bags down in her apartment, and came directly to the studio to sing. She's probably the hardest working person I've run into in this business and I’m such a fan of what she did on that somber version of "Solitaire."

Peter Visser (Bettie Serveert): We did "For All We Know" and in retrospect, I think my guitar is a bit over the top, too desperate to make a "rock song" out of it. For the ending, I thought the song could use some cowbells, so in the lobby of the studio we found an aluminum lemon squeezer, put it on a piece of rope, and beat it with a fork. I think Carol did a great job with the singing. Her voice sounds really close and warm in the verses and goes full on in the choruses. 

Carol van Dyk (Bettie Serveert): After recording all the music, we came up with the idea to have me lying flat on my back on the floor in the middle of the studio. They hung the microphone right above my face and the guys placed little tea lights around me and turned off the studio lamps to create a nice soft atmosphere. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a camera with us, so no pictures.

J. R. Richards (Dishwalla): Recording "It's Going to Take Some Time" was officially the very first thing we did after getting signed to A&M. The tribute album was already in motion, like most of the bands had already picked songs and were in the process of recording them. In fact, we actually recorded a full demo of "Close To You" to show them that we wouldn’t do a sh*tty job. When we took it to A&M to show them, we were told it had already been picked by another band. So, we took a shot at "It’s Going To Take Some Time" and tried to take it to a different rhythmic place. We speed it up quite a bit because we didn’t want it to sound too sweet. I played the original keyboard intro on a Wurlitzer right at the beginning and then we took it off into its own journey.   

Mark Eitzel (American Music Club): We just wanted to approach "Goodbye To Love" really simply with no key changes and no orchestration or anything. Just a simple band vibe. All the way up until the final mixes our producer was trying to get me to re-record my vocals because he thought Richard wasn’t excited about the idea of people recording his songs in a bastardized way. Like, Richard’s already made them perfect, so why would you want these messy rockers to spoil the perfection? Nowadays I would’ve worked my ass off to make it perfect, but back then I was just a young idiot. I think the track turned out really great though.

Grant-Lee Phillips (Grant Lee Buffalo): Our version of "We've Only Just Begun" is a little more reverent to the original because we were really struck by the musical architecture of the song. We studied how it was put together and tried to be true to it. It was a natural thing for me to interpret it by singing it a bit higher and trying to meet Karen's vocal in the middle.

Dave Konjoyan (co-producer): I remember there being such a sense of excitement about every track as they came in. From our conversations with the bands, my impression was that they were all doing it from a heartfelt place. They certainly all brought their personalities to their tracks and they all seemed to have some affinity for the music and for The Carpenters as artists.

Deep into the project, Wallace and Konjoyan ended up getting the ultimate seal of approval, as Richard Carpenter agreed to sing and play on one of the tracks. Matthew Sweet had requested Richard’s participation on his true-to-form adaptation of "Let Me Be The One" (a syrupy ballad from the quadruple-platinum Carpenters album from 1971) and somewhat surprisingly to most everyone involved, he agreed.

Matthew Sweet: It was my request to see if we could find him and get him to play on it. At the time, I had this 1970s Dodge Challenger and he had a huge car collection that was in a big building in an office park. He took me out there to see it, which was really cool. He was super nice to me and seemed really supportive of doing the track.

Matt Wallace (co-producer): From the beginning, we knew we wanted to get Richard on board, but we also knew we were limited in regards to which artists he would fit with and feel comfortable. I think he wanted to make sure he wasn't straying too far from the legacy of The Carpenters and he didn't want to do a disservice to what he and Karen had so carefully built.

Dave Konjoyan (co-producer): I was there at the studio the day Matthew and Richard recorded "Let Me Be The One" and I remember them having a great time doing it. I think Richard felt appreciated. It was a really great moment for Matt and I to get to bring these different musical worlds together on the album and it really came together in that moment in the studio.

If I Were A Carpenter was officially released on September 13, 1994. A split single between Redd Kross's "Yesterday Once More" and Sonic Youth's "Superstar" was released to radio, and the music videos of both tracks got substantial airplay on MTV. Dishwalla even got to perform "It's Going To Take Some Time" on the short-lived late-night talk show The Jon Stewart Show. Rolling Stone called the album "affectionate, almost reverent" and Entertainment Weekly had a listening party with Richard to get his thoughts, from Sonic Youth ("I love it. From the heart. It's quite haunting") to Shonen Knife ("I like the energy, but they've left out a couple of chord changes"). But what did those involved with the project think about each other's tracks?     

Grant-Lee Phillips: Reverence can come in many packages.

Matt Wallace (co-producer): Once we got all of the tracks back and heard that the arc of the record was leaning a little more somber, we knew that we wanted to start the record off with American Music Club's "Goodbye To Love." Then, Shonen Knife's "Top of the World" became the perfect follow-up track because it's so upbeat and effervescent. They beat The Carpenters at their own game on that one.

Naoko Yamano (Shonen Knife): I love Redd Kross so much and Jeff McDonald's vocals on "Yesterday Once More" are really great!

Dave Konjoyan (co-producer): I really liked what Cracker did with "Rainy Days And Mondays." It was certainly a different interpretation than the original, but it was very fitting for who they are as a band.        

Grant-Lee Phillips (Grant Lee Buffalo): I most enjoyed The Cranberries take on "Close To You" and the way Dolores delivered the lyrics in her way of bending the notes and just wrapping them around her finger.     

Paul Williams: I love David Lowery's singing on "Rainy Days And Mondays" and the way those strings roll in about midway through. Initially I thought it may have been a little tongue-in-cheek, but I love how they totally made it their own. I really believe him when he sings "What I got they used to call the blues."

J. R. Richards (Dishwalla): Shonen Knife's "Top Of The World" is just completely out there and fun. Sonic Youth's "Superstar" is also amazing. It's just so harrowing. 

Fergal Lawler (The Cranberries): I really enjoyed the Sonic Youth track. That one stood out the most to me when we listened to the whole thing.

Peter Visser (Bettie Serveert): My favorite is "Superstar" by Sonic Youth because Thurston Moore sings it so beautifully. I really liked the music video with the golden microphone as well.

Paul Williams (songwriter): The wonderful thing about listening to Thurston sing "Superstar" is that it's totally believable. That one feels so much like it's about Karen. You really get the sense of remembering her and missing her in his performance. It's just marvelous.

Matt Wallace (co-producer): At the time, the most forward-leaning track was Dishwalla's "It's Going To Take Some Time" because of that blending of loops and real drums. It feels like five years ahead of its time. They were the only band on the tribute that hadn’t already released an album but we just really liked them.

While the last 25 years has seen If I Were A Carpenter serving double duty as an authentically celebratory tribute to the legacy of The Carpenters and also a telling sonic snapshot into the unaffected, unpretentious side of '90s alternative music, the album does have one nagging (albeit trivial) piece of unfinished business: as of yet, there's no 12" LP vinyl version of the record. Although the tribute did get an original-run vinyl release as a boxset of seven 7" singles (a very nostalgically appropriate approach in itself), vinyl collectors have been clamoring for a full-size 12" LP for years, hoping for either a label-sponsored vinyl debut reissue or even a limited-run Record Store Day exclusive offering.   

Matthew Sweet: I remember they did a bunch of 7" singles but it never got the full 12" record treatment. In the '90s, you weren’t guaranteed vinyl at all. So that was kind of a special and unusually cool way to release it.  

Carol van Dyk (Bettie Serveert): A while back somebody asked us if we had a spare Carpenters tribute vinyl boxset. We had to disappoint them, but I totally understand why they wanted one, it’s such a cool thing to have as a fan.

David Lowery: When I became a thrift store loving college kid in the '80s, Carpenters records were always an interesting novelty to come across. It’d be nice to see this album get that treatment too.

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Dave Konjoyan (co-producer): That’s a little bit of a sore spot. Physically, the record's been out of print for years but I think it would be really great if they ever put out a full vinyl version. I'd really love to see it.

Matthew Sweet: To finally get a full vinyl pressing of it would be a no-brainer for something like Record Store Day. Somebody's got to make that happen! That would really bring the whole tribute full circle.