Sophie B. Hawkins portrait

Sophie B. Hawkins

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Sophie B. Hawkins On "Nocturne," Songwriting & Dark Mystery

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GRAMMY-nominated artist details how a moody deep album track bottles her songwriting process and identifies a must-hear Bobbie Gentry gem
Chuck Crisafulli
GRAMMYs
Sep 15, 2017 - 10:07 am

Most listeners first became aware of Sophie B. Hawkins with the release of her 1992 album, Tongues And Tails, and its breakout single, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" — a debut powerful enough to earn her a Best New Artist nomination at the 35th GRAMMY Awards.

Hawkins went on to create more hits, including 1995's "As I Lay Me Down," but some of her deeper album tracks have served as equally powerful showcases for her darkly poetic lyrics and distinctive vocals.

A case in point is "Nocturne" from her 1994 sophomore release, Whaler. The song's mix of soothing groove and unsettling imagery make it comforting and spooky at the same time, which Hawkins says was exactly the point.

"The inspiration for the song is really my inspiration for being a songwriter, because that song is about being carried by something that's frightening but also familiar and familial," she explains.

"It's a way of romanticizing or 'magicalizing' something terrifying. That's what children do when they're dealing with chaos in the world around them and that's basically what I'm always trying to do as a songwriter."

Hawkins says the lyrics to "Nocturne" were something of a breakthrough in explaining her perspective as an artist.

"Some of my friends used to ask me why there was so much darkness in my writing, and I'd have to tell them that I didn't know, because I didn't really have the words for it. But deep inside I think I did know, and 'Nocturne' was a song that was trying to get to that and explain it.

"The opening lyrics are, 'Nightmare bring me to the dawn.' It's about being carried by a dark force to a bright place, and about making yourself vulnerable in order to create something powerful. That's still a pretty good description of my songwriting process."

Somewhat surprisingly given its substance, the song was not one that Hawkins had to toil over. She was living in London during the making of Whaler and after studio sessions she would go home to the piano on the fourth floor of her brownstone to write songs and record demos. One night, the words and music to "Nocturne" poured out of her.

"It's one of the very few songs of mine that just came out all at once, like a gift," she recalls. (One of the other songs created during those same demo sessions was "As I Lay Me Down.")

Hawkins was in such a state of inspiration while writing "Nocturne" that she ended up using a good part of her demo recording as the song’s finished tracks.

"There was something in those demo vocals that I wasn't going to be able to get again in the studio, so we just used them," she says. "And then it seemed to make sense to use a lot of the original keyboard sounds and the percussion sounds from my old 808 [drum machine]. A lot of what ended up in the song came straight from the home demo."

At this point in her career, Hawkins — who is currently on tour in the United States — says she doesn't make much of a distinction between her hits and deep cuts.

"'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' was the one that went out to the world and got people to come to my shows. But 'Nocturne' is that song's amazing little sister, who I love just as much. To me, they're equal children."

Asked for a favorite deep cut by someone else, Hawkins doesn't hesitate to name a song by another master of spooky vibes, Bobbie Gentry, best known for the mysterious No. 1 hit "Ode To Billy Joe," and Best New Artist GRAMMY winner for 1967.

"People don't realize that she recorded eight albums," says Hawkins. "On the second one [1968's The Delta Sweete], she has a song called 'Jessye' Lisabeth' that's just so beautiful. I heard that when I was growing up and it has really stayed with me. It's tender and vulnerable and there's something going on there that you can't quite figure out. It's still hard to tell who she's singing to, but I don't ever want to find out. The mystery is part of the beauty."

More Deep Tracks: Moby Reflects On 'Last Night,' Songwriting, "Everyday It's 1989"

(Chuck Crisafulli is an L.A.-based journalist and author whose most recent works include Go To Hell: A Heated History Of The Underworld, Me And A Guy Named Elvis, Elvis: My Best Man, and Running With The Champ: My Forty-Year Friendship With Muhammad Ali.)

Wayne Coyne photographed in 2017

Wayne Coyne

Photo: Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images

Feature

Flaming Lips: Wayne Coyne On Sad, Strange "Mr. Ambulance Driver"

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Learn how sirens, acoustic guitars, 911 calls, and Coyne's mother inspired a cool never-performed-live track from 2006's GRAMMY-winning 'At War With The Mystics'
Roy Trakin
GRAMMYs
Sep 21, 2017 - 2:23 pm

The Flaming Lips' At War With The Mystics rolled in four years after the eclectic group's one-two commercial breakthrough of 1999's The Soft Bulletin and 2002's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.

By 2006 the band veered into a harder-edged direction, mashing up Pink Floyd-inflected prog psychedelia and Prince-influenced percolating funk into a curious hybrid that earned the Lips two of their three career GRAMMYs: The haunted, flute-based sounds of the mouthful "The Wizard Turns On…The Giant Silver Flashlight And Puts On His Werewolf Moccasins" earned Best Rock Instrumental Performance and At War With The Mystics netted Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical honors.

While At War … sported no actual Top 40 hits, the first single, "The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat)" hit No. 41 in the U.K. Meanwhile, the second single, "The Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)," climbed to No. 6 in England, fueled three separate ad campaigns, including spots for Intel, Kraft and Oklahoma Gas & Electric. A third track, the funky bass-laden turned dreamily ambient "It Overtakes Me …," was used in a U.K. TV spot for Beck's beer.

"Mr. Ambulance Driver," then, represents a true deep track on the album in the sense that you wouldn't expect the Flaming Lips to sound like this, though co-writer Wayne Coyne has decidedly mixed feelings about the track 11 years later.

Starting with what sounds like a 911 call combined with an actual siren that wails through the entire song, in some cases carrying its melody, "Mr. Ambulance Driver" offers what Wayne calls "a mellow, melancholy, slightly tragic, but not overly sad" tale sung over a combination of Todd Rundgren's blue-eyed R&B and Boz Scaggs' smooth pop-soul, tied together with co-writer Steve Drozd's gurgling Steely Dan-esque jazz riffs.

"That song was just me, sitting with an acoustic guitar and my four-track recorder, which is a wonderful way to write, especially if you're not a musician," says the self-effacing Coyne. "Some of it works, but some of it sounds like songwriter's disease. It doesn't necessarily jump into something that's unexpected.  Whenever I hear it by accident, I always perk up and think it's cool until I realize it's us."

The Flaming Lips at the 45th GRAMMYs in 2003

The Flaming Lips at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007
Photo: Rick Diamond/WireImage.com

Coyne doesn't remember where the opening phone call came from, except to guess it might have been part of producer Dave Fridmann's sound library. But he does acknowledge the role of the siren as the hook in the song.

"That's the strange thing about sirens," he observes. "They work no matter what piece of music you place it in. There's this Doppler effect where it changes pitches as it moves away from you. It's all based on a tone that will get your attention.  Using the siren there was a temptation we couldn't resist. When people listen to the CD in their cars, they think they're being pulled over.  We were secretly overjoyed for that to happen.

"To this day, we've never played it live. If we would have embraced it and played it in front of an audience, we probably would have found more stuff about it. But that's our fault."

"If you listen to any album long enough, you tend to lose track of what's a hit and what's a deep track. They all seem to blend together."

Although Coyne claims he basically stumbled upon "Mr. Ambulance Driver," he acknowledges that it was written in part as a nod to his mother, who passed away shortly before recording it.

"I didn't want to write exactly about her, or merely turn it into a sad song," he says Coyne. "My mother wouldn't have wanted me to feel that way, so I was trying to sing about my life and her death in a way that wasn't 'woe is me.'"

And while Coyne isn't 100 percent satisfied with the final results, he realizes that the track is very true to the band's ethos.

"The song isn't one of our major achievements, but it could be. You never know," says Coyne. "It's the world that makes your songs what they are more than you do. It is a very Flaming Lips kind of song. There are not a lot of writers who would start off a song [like that]. But there is something in the Flaming Lips' universe that likes ambulances. I've had a couple of experiences with them that I sing about."

As for his own favorite deep track by another artist, Coyne refers to a Paul McCartney concert he recently attended.

"Not like there are any undiscovered gems in his catalog, but I did like 'Let Me Roll It' [B-side to the Paul McCartney And Wings' 1974 single "Jet"], which sort of gets overlooked on the Band On The Run album. I was surprised he performed it in concert. If you listen to any album long enough, you tend to lose track of what's a hit and what's a deep track. They all seem to blend together."

(Roy Trakin is a veteran music journalist whose work appears in Variety and Freedom Leaf, and still holds out hope for Suicide's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.)

Kirk Franklin photographed in 2016

Photo: Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Feature

Kirk Franklin: The Message Of "Why," Lyrics & Stevie Wonder

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GRAMMY winner talks the timelessness of his song "Why" from 2005's 'Hero,' the art of sampling and why collaborations rock, plus which lost song helps keep him focused
Roy Trakin
GRAMMYs
Sep 5, 2017 - 12:29 pm

With hits like "Looking For You" and "Declaration (This Is It)," Kirk Franklin has made a career out of skillfully combining contemporary R&B and hip-hop with gospel. From the very start, Franklin has often collaborated with secular artists to drive his uplifting messages home.

Kirk Franklin Wins Best Gospel Album GRAMMY

Case in point: "Why," Franklin's catchy gem of a collaboration with Stevie Wonder, presents a social critique that fuses soul with a traditional fire-and-brimstone preaching style that zeroes in on modern-day ills such as materialism and terror in a way that remains particularly relevant today, especially given the work of acolytes such as Chance The Rapper and Kanye West.

"Why" is the 14th track on Franklin's 2005 release, Hero, which earned a GRAMMY for Best Contemporary R&B Gospel Album and was very much a concept album about a world still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, beginning with the opener "Intro — America The Beautiful." 

And while "Why" represented one of several collaborations on the album, which also featured Yolanda Adams, Marvin Winans, P.O.D.'s Sonny Sandoval, and TobyMac, its place in history is secure mostly due to hits such as "Looking For You," which went to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Gospel Songs chart, and "Imagine Me," which earned a GRAMMY for Best Gospel Song at the 49th GRAMMY Awards.

All the same, Franklin acknowledges the timeliness of "Why" considering today's current events. 

"What we're going through now as a culture is something we've been going through for a long time," says Franklin. "That song was written just a few years after 9/11. It deals with the ups and downs of society, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That's kind of a narrative of the times, whether this century or last. It's just a dilemma we continue to wrestle with."

As with all his songs, Franklin credits God with giving him the inspiration for "Why."

"I really believe it spoke to what we were and can still speak to what we still are," he says. "Those things have a hard time changing until the people in control have more compassion for those that don't have. That's why the song is timeless. And as much as that's a compliment, it is also a disappointment that those issues are still here."

In terms of his songwriting, Franklin has no blueprint as to whether melody or lyrics come first, preferring to "just roll with it. … This one was definitely written with Stevie Wonder in mind, [and it was] inspired by his entire body of work.

Kirk Franklin, Andra Day To Perform On "GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends" On Oct. 13

"I approached him and said I have a song for the album I wanted him to do with me. I sent it to him, he heard it and really, really loved it. You don't even need to hear any of his songs, in particular, to be influenced by him [or] to enable you to pull from a certain vibe or feel that makes you want to go in that direction. I had the idea for him to play harmonica at the end."

Like the rest of Hero, which included samples from Patrice Rushen ("Haven't You Heard" is sampled in "Looking For You") and Tears For Fears ("Shout" in "Let It Go"), "Why" sports a sample of Deniese Williams' "Free," a track from her 1976 album, This Is Niecey.

"Samples occur very naturally and organically for me," says Franklin. "When done the right way, it can be a tip of the hat, a celebration of the person's artistry, a compliment to them."

As for the lyrics, Franklin very much assumes the persona of a minister in terms of delivering his message, raising the fervor with his litany of a society teetering on the edge of collapse.

"['Why' is] meant to be a sermon," he says. "I'm just trying to find creative, new ways of communicating. Just because you're a Christian, that doesn't mean you can't deal in social issues. We have a responsibility, as Christians, to talk about the things going on around us, and to try to resolve them."

And while he considers the deep track "Why" to be a strong highlight from Hero, Franklin admits he lets others make the decision when it comes to picking singles.

"I've never really been good at knowing what makes one and what doesn't," he says. "It's important for the artist to just create the music, then allow it to go where it's supposed to. When you start to think about what goes on the radio, the music can come across contrived. I just want to be able to do music that speaks to the souls of people, and to be real in that process."

As for his own choice of a favorite sleeper deep track, Franklin's go-to song comes from the catalog of the late gospel artist Thomas Whitfield, who specialized in merging jazz and classical into traditional gospel roots.

"The song is 'In Case You've Forgotten' [from 1991's My Faith]," says Franklin. "It's a powerful, reflective song. When I'm getting ready to go onstage or to undertake a life-changing event, I'll listen to it in my headphones because it helps me focus, and reminds me of what it is I do and why I do it."

(Roy Trakin is a veteran music journalist whose work appears in Variety and Freedom Leaf, and still holds out hope for Suicide's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.)

More Songwriting: Moby Reflects On 'Last Night' & "Everyday It's 1989"
 

Moby photographed by Gradient magazine

Moby

Photo: Matt Fried

Feature

Moby Reflects On 'Last Night,' Songwriting, "Everyday It's 1989"

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GRAMMY nominee on why obscure tracks rock, his 2008 album, 'Last Night,' and how nostalgia, technology and raves inspired "Everyday It's 1989"
Chuck Crisafulli
GRAMMYs
Aug 28, 2017 - 12:42 pm

As a DJ, songwriter, producer and performer, Moby has always been a decidedly forward-looking artist who embraces new technology to create genre-defying music. But on his 2008 album, Last Night, the GRAMMY nominee allowed himself to look backward for inspiration with the old-style rave track "Everyday It's 1989."

"The nostalgia was no secret," Moby explains. "The title of [that] song is sort of an explicit acknowledgment that I could have written this exact song in 1989, even though it was 2006 when I was working on it."

Moby's decision to indulge in a retro approach was the result of both personal epiphany and, oddly enough, technological advances.

He began his career as a DJ, but by the mid-2000s, he'd logged nearly 15 years of touring as a live performer and bandleader. While on tour in Germany, Moby decided to work as a guest DJ at a club on a night that his band didn't have a scheduled show.

"Rule No. 1 for fans should be: "Congratulate the obscure."

"I left my hotel, and I was holding some USB sticks, which contained all the music I was going to play that night," he recalls. "They weighed roughly an ounce. I looked up at the hotel and realized I had 15 musicians and touring personnel there, and I looked at the two tour buses and the two trucks that we had parked in front of the hotel. I realized that, practically speaking, that night the little USB sticks were going to do exactly what the trucks and the buses and the musicians and touring personnel were going to do the next night. I suddenly thought, 'Oh!'"

Moby didn't stop touring, but he became much more active as a DJ on the burgeoning EDM scene, enjoying the spontaneity and easy logistics of gigs that required nothing more than an app-laden laptop. And his re-immersion in the club scene was soon reflected in his songwriting.

"I found myself kind of falling in love with dance culture again," says Moby. "I started writing all sorts of different kinds of dance tracks and a lot of them ended up on Last Night, which as an album became an overview of different types of dance music and different types of electronic inspirations.

"When I found this old gospel sample of a woman singing, I decided to write a straight-up, unapologetically old-school rave track around it, using all the things the old rave tracks had — the piano, the strings, the breakbeats. I sort of wrote 'Everyday It's 1989' as a lark, for my own weird love of old rave music."

The writing process for "Everyday ..." was quite different from hits such as "Disco Lies," "Porcelain" or "Pale Horses" and didn't involve much consideration about song structure — Moby says he was simply following the template of archetypal dance tracks. 

"I can't count the number of rave records made in the late '80s and '90s that have an almost identical structure," he says. "There wasn't really much thought to that, because I'd already recorded so many of them and listened to so many of them that the structure was encoded in my DNA."

At first Moby thought "Everyday It's 1989" might just be a private joke, but when younger associates responded to it enthusiastically as a fresh track rather than an exercise in nostalgia, he decided to include it on Last Night, which ultimately received a Best Electronic/Dance Album nomination at the 51st GRAMMY Awards. And, to his ears, this particular deep album cut holds up well.

"At the time I'm working on something I can only hear the imperfections, which drive me crazy. But if enough time passes, those imperfections become endearing. My self-criticism has waned."

When pressed for a favorite deep cut from another artist, Moby cites a recent face-to-face encounter.

"I was at a party the other night and ran into Billy Idol, who I’d never met. I told him how much I loved a song from his first album [1982's Billy Idol] called "Love Calling" — an almost Gary Glitter-ish sounding track," says Moby. "His eyes just lit up, and I got the feeling that no one had ever complimented him on that song. That just reinforced the idea that talking about deep cuts truly is the way to a musician’s heart. Rule No. 1 for fans should be: "Congratulate the obscure."

(Chuck Crisafulli is an L.A.-based journalist and author whose most recent works include Go To Hell: A Heated History Of The Underworld, Me And A Guy Named Elvis, Elvis: My Best Man, and Running With The Champ: My Forty-Year Friendship With Muhammad Ali.)

More Songwriting: Khalid Shares The Story Behind His Hit Single "Location"

5th Dimension and Jimmy Webb

5th Dimension with Jimmy Webb (center)

Photo: William R. Eastabrook/M. Photographer

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5th Dimension To Elvis Presley: 7 Things To Know About The 10th GRAMMY Awards

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Take a look back at the GRAMMY Awards' 10th anniversary celebration and learn who won big and other major storylines
Renée Fabian
GRAMMYs
Dec 20, 2017 - 10:50 am

Since the inaugural GRAMMY celebration, the GRAMMY Awards made a lot of progress in its first decade.

GRAMMY Performers In 90 Seconds: 1960s–1970s

From televised recognition to high-flying GRAMMY feats, firsts, an expanded number of categories, and four separate celebration dinners, the 10th GRAMMY Awards delivered the prestige the music industry and fans alike had come to appreciate about the burgeoning annual ceremony. As future telecast host Andy Williams summed up during the televised portion of the show, "[The GRAMMY] is the Oscar, the Emmy [and] the Tony of the recording industry."

Let's take a look back at how the GRAMMY Awards faired for their 10th birthday deep in the heart of the 1960s, and learn which of your favorite artists came out on top.

1. Four Cities Of Celebration And A TV Spot

While the 1st GRAMMY Awards were bicoastal, by the 10th GRAMMYs the Recording Academy's wings spread with awards dinners held in Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, Tenn., and New York. Comedian Stan Freberg teed up the Los Angeles celebration as emcee. The winners were announced on Feb. 29, 1968.

The GRAMMYs had a TV spot by now, too. "The Best On Record: The GRAMMY Awards Show" aired on NBC later that year on May 8, 1968. The broadcast, though not the full-fledged spectacle it became as a live telecast in 1973, featured performances such as a past Song Of The Year medley led by Glen Campbell, Bobbie Gentry, Chet Atkins, and Jack Jones.

2. 5th Dimension Fly "Up, Up And Away"

With their smooth harmonies, Los Angeles-based "Champagne Soul" group 5th Dimension emerged as one of the big winners. The quintet soared with a total of four wins for the Jimmy L. Webb-penned smash hit "Up, Up And Away." 5th Dimension took home Record Of The Year, Best Performance By A Vocal Group, Best Contemporary Single, and Best Contemporary Group Performance (Vocal Or Instrumental). "Up, Up And Away" also earned Song Of The Year honors for songwriter Webb.

3. Queen of Soul Gets Her "Respect"

Aretha Franklin earned her "Respect" at the 10th GRAMMY Awards. She took home her first two career GRAMMYs for her soulful call for a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T — Best Rhythm & Blues Recording and Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female. Nowadays, the Queen of Soul is among the top GRAMMY winners of all time with 18 career awards. But it all started 50 years ago at the 10th GRAMMYs.

Want More GRAMMY History? Pick A Copy Of And The GRAMMY Goes To…

4. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Prevails

By the time the 10th GRAMMYs rolled around, the Beatles had already made their mark, earning Best New Artist honors at the 7th GRAMMY Awards three years earlier. But with their magnum opus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the British quartet transitioned to music royalty. They nabbed five GRAMMY nominations for 1967, and ultimately took home two for the coveted Album Of The Year prize and Best Contemporary Album.

Sgt. Pepper's … proved to be a hit in other categories as well. The album's pioneering sonics earned engineer Geoff Emerick Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical honors. Art directors Peter Blake and Jann Haworth took home Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts for the album's seminal cover art.

Revisit Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band At 50

5. Elvis, The King Of … Gospel

Though Elvis Presley earned nine career GRAMMY nominations prior to the 10th GRAMMY Awards for classics such as "A Big Hunk O' Love," "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and the soundtrack to Blue Hawaii, the King of Rock and Roll actually earned his first career GRAMMY this year — for Best Sacred Performance.

Presley took home the GRAMMY for his version of "How Great Thou Art," from the album of the same name. How Great Thou Art was Presley's second gospel album, following His Hand In Mine, and it was in this realm the King would find his GRAMMY success. Presley went on to win two additional career GRAMMYs, both for Best Inspirational Performance.

6. Country's Biggest Night

The country genre arguably came out on top at the 10th GRAMMY Awards, thanks to two of its brightest stars: Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry.

Campbell tied the evening for most awards in one night with 5th Dimension, taking home four GRAMMYs: Best Vocal Performance, Male and Best Contemporary Male Solo Vocal Performance for "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" and Best Country & Western Recording and Best Country & Western Solo Vocal Performance, Male for "Gentle On My Mind."

Gentry nabbed three awards. She earned the Best New Artist trophy as one of the first female country artists to write and record her own material. The Mississippian also took home Best Vocal Performance, Female and Best Contemporary Female Solo Vocal Performance for her career-defining hit "Ode To Billie Joe."  

Want More GRAMMY History? Pick A Copy Of And The GRAMMY Goes To…

7. Winners Were Recognized In 48 Categories

The number of awards given at the annual GRAMMYs had been creeping up since the first winners were crowned. By its 10th anniversary, categories had gone from 28 at the 1st GRAMMYs to 39 at the 5th GRAMMY Awards and then to an even 48 by the 10th GRAMMY Awards.

In addition to pop, jazz and classical, other genres, including an expanded array of country and R&B awards, were now getting their due. Also, several craft categories that recognized engineers, arrangers and art directors came onto the scene as a harbinger of what is now the 84 GRAMMY categories across all genres and craft categories.

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