meta-scriptThe Exploding Hearts' Terry Six Shares The Stories Behind 'Guitar Romantic' | GRAMMY.com
The Exploding Hearts' Terry Six Shares The Stories Behind 'Guitar Romantic'
The Exploding Hearts, from left: Matt Fitzgerald, Terry Six , Jeremy Gage and Adam Cox

Photo: Christi Branchaw 

interview

The Exploding Hearts' Terry Six Shares The Stories Behind 'Guitar Romantic'

The beloved power pop album is getting a 20th anniversary expanded reissue. Guitarist Terry Six details the history behind each track from 'Guitar Romantic' — and why he’s changing the conversation about the group.

GRAMMYs/May 25, 2023 - 01:41 pm

The Exploding Hearts’ history is rock lore catnip: A quartet of high school friends (plus a quirky "fifth Beatle") from Portland were singularly dedicated to making music. They released one beloved and often misunderstood album. And just as the group was hitting their stride, a van accident on tour killed three of its members — all of whom were in their 20s.

What remained of the group’s output, 2003’s Guitar Romantic, is power pop perfection. Its 10 tracks are led by lovelorn, hooky lyrics and appropriately snotty vocals; punchy guitar and killer bass that are both studied and seemingly effortless. The record has been handed down from punk to punk for 20 years, and still stands out among the era’s alternative output. But naturally, the conversation around Guitar Romantic is not without a heavy tone of tragedy.

Guitarist Terry Six — the sole surviving member of the Exploding Hearts, as their fifth member "King" Louie Bankston passed away in 2022 — wants to change that. With help from Third Man Records and original producer Pat Kerns, Guitar Romantic has been reissued and expanded.

"Not only does it feel like it needs another shot, but it needs a different approach. I'm tired of the album being synonymous with death," Six tells GRAMMY.com from his home outside Palm Springs, California. "That’s not what they would have wanted. That's not what I wanted. And that's not why we signed up to do this."

Six and vocalist/guitarist Adam Cox, bassist Matt Fitzgerald and drummer Jeremy Gage "invested our entire soul" into making Guitar Romantic. "Every single choice we made was, how do we make this album the best it could possibly be?" Six recalls. “We lived, breathed and ate that album at the time."

The Exploding Hearts wore their influences on their sleeves, referring regularly to Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and ‘70s punk. "Adam’s subject was always heartbreak, loss and tragedy of that sort, and it needed a bit more of a brazen edge to it," Six says. "We kind of agreed: We'll take the saddest, most melancholy subject matter, and take the page from Nick Lowe, but like here's Buzzcocks, here’s the Jam, here’s the Dead Boys. Let's kind of f— this up a little bit."

Guitar Romantic was recorded over two weeks in a cramped basement studio in Hillsdale, Oregon. The band did everything themselves, recording each section separately and then building the record huddled over a soundboard in a converted laundry room. Their studio chatter is all over the reissue, which features three additional tracks, and allowed Six some catharsis.  

"Discovering all the audible life and background noises of us talking and bulls—ng and I was just like, I need to put this in here," Six says of the reissue. "People need to hear that these were people."

Out May 26, the reissue will be followed by several already sold-out shows where Six will sing with a new band. "I'm putting the record back on tour and I'm merely just a conduit to it," he adds. 

Below, Six recalls the stories behind each song on Guitar Romantic – which he remembers with impressive detail. "From right after the accident, I think I knew that I was the timekeeper. And I would have to remember everything," he says, adding that he never stopped listening to the record.

"There are a lot of things that I don't listen to from my past or are just like, cringe for me. But this isn't one of them. And I'm really proud of this album and ….I don't have a bad memory about it. It's all positivity for me."

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

"Modern Kicks"

By the time we were getting into adulthood…Adam left to go back home to San Diego. I after a while wouldn't let [the idea of our band] go. Adam and I talked all the time on the phone and then I eventually convinced him to move back to Portland to do this. How I did that was I played "Modern Kicks" for him over the phone — from his apartment, which I was subletting — and "Jailbird" and he perked up and he's "Okay, I'm coming back."

"Modern Kicks" was [originally] really slow; it was jangly and it was like okay, this is more like Flamin' Groovies, but where's the punk? It was a cool song, but there was nothing anthemic about it. To see that song re-recorded again [in the Guitar Romantic sessions] with more firepower from Matt and just more rehearsed, we really drove the punk edge home. That that opening and that just getting in there with the cans and then just letting it rip was really great. 

"I'm a Pretender" 

So Adam was on one side of the street, Louis was on another, and Louie yelled at Adam: "spider baaaaby," because Adam was in the Spider Babies and Louie knew that band. They day drank together and Adam was kind of catching up and telling Louie about what he was doing and he gave the Pink Demo of what we were doing, Louis took it home, listened to it over and over and over again, and called Adam that night and said "You have to let me in your band. and I have the perfect song for you. It's called ‘I'm A Pretender.’"

It sounded almost like a skate punk song, but the idea was there. There wasn't an opening, there wasn't the pre chorus, it was just Louie banging on a guitar and just playing it as fast as he could with bar chords. Adam heard the potential.

Louie tried to pitch "I'm a Pretender" to the Royal Pendletons, which was his first band. He played it for [producer] Alex Chilton when they were recording. And then Alex stopped and was like, "Louie, you wrote a hit song. That's amazing. Let's do it." And then none of the band wanted to do it. So he sat on the song for about eight years.

Louie was married before. And then he left New Orleans to come to Portland. He and I never really talked about it a lot, but I know that he always did have issues with thinking he could be in love or that he could have a solid relationship. I definitely think that there's an air of truth in the song for Louie.  

"Thorns In Roses"

That's probably the most disappointing song to me. I love that song and I love playing that song, but it was not meant to be a duet. Adam was an idea guy, so was I, we just had different ideas about it. Since I was always coming from the less is more [school] I said something like, "Save the duets for your solo career in like 20 years." Let's make a punk record, you know?

And we fought about it. He heard me at the time and said "No, you're right. I won't do it." Until we got to the studio and then he's like, "No, we're doing it."  In a band, you make compromises even though you don't know you're making them.

"You're Black and Blue"

That song was around for four years before we were even the Exploding Hearts. Adam wrote that song about one of his ex-girlfriends that had blue eyes and black hair. That's when we first started getting into  the Zeros — we loved that band. Every time we were stuck, were like okay, let's make this a Zeros part.

We played it faster live a few times. But I think that we brought it down to make it more like [the Zeros’] "Hand Grenade Heart" a little bit tempo-wise. It left more room to be creative and do backups. It was a cool-off song before Sleeping Aids. 

"Sleeping Aides and Razor Blades"

That song I think we just pulled out last minute. I mean, Pat has a few versions of us really working that out — because he was a part of the pre-production phase, he kept everything that we ever did: practices and rehearsals, whatever.

And that song is another example of a song that went leaps and bounds and took a lot of workshopping. Because again, it was [originally] played with a different bass player it was a lot slower. [Editor's note: the Exploding Hearts initially engaged a bassist named Jim Evans prior to Fitzgerald rejoining the group.]

"Rumours in Town"

We were very Jam- inspired. We had the Rickenbacker and the Marshall, so we decided to use it and we didn’t have a song in G — we were thinking of [the Jam's] "In The City." That song took a lot of workshopping. God, we probably did it 10,000 times in rehearsals. That's another song that just really came together when we were tracking guitars.

None of these songs were [written] as fast as they were on the actual finished product. I had to relearn them as I was tracking them. That was a song that I really had to make some on the fly judgments about.

I just kept thinking I'm just gonna do what I think Pete Townshend would do here, and then just do open voice stuff and bang the hell out of the guitar.  

"Throwaway Style"

I still kind of step back and like I can't believe we did "Throwaway Style." When I heard that in pre-production, I was like, this sounds like a joke. It just sounded like a dumb song; it was a lot slower.

That’s another one of those songs that just happened In the studio. I remember we tried to do some open voice chords and some weird changes with the chorus, and I was like, “No, we just need to play it straight, just do power chords and keep it as minimalistic as possible and just drive it home."

That one took the longest time to get up to snuff. To Matt's credit, he made that song. The bass is everything. And the fact that he did it as punchy and as he kept the time with Jeremy, that's what was missing. That's what made that song great.

When we were tracking vocals, Pat kept saying to Adam, "More Diana! Less punk, more Diana." That was how we kind of got him to sing so high as he was like, Okay, I'll just pretend I'm Diana Ross. The other thing about this record is that we wanted to take production value from old Motown records. And we were really, really, really adamant about getting a Motown drum sound. 

"Boulevard Trash"

That was my name in one of our previous bands, Boulevard Trash; my 18-year-old also-known-as title.

We just wanted a pub rocker. We love "Heart Of The City" by Nick Lowe; we love Larry Wallace; and we were thinking of all these really cool footstompers. We didn't have a trashy, Dolls-y, just straight-ahead blast so we pulled that out of our ass.

We all sat and sat in a room together for the lyrics, and we were just blurting out shit as we went. We had a notepad on the table and Louie was like, "I don't do the dishes no more!" and then we're like, "I just throw them away!"

It was like one of those really fun group efforts that I love about our history —  we’re equally having as much fun not trying as we are trying very hard to be a band, and that was one of those moments. ["Boulevard Trash" is] a perfect representation — there was no stress about it. We wrote it in an afternoon. 

"Jailbird"

That one was one of the songs that I lured Adam back to moving to Portland. I remember holding the phone up to the guitar and playing the opening line, and then he went, "Okay, all right. I'll figure something out." So I have really fond memories about that.

That was a song that stumped me. I had this cool idea for what I called "the king’s opening." So it was the D and the C and then the slide in — I was really obsessed with the Kinks at that point. So I was thinking of "Tired Of Waiting For You" and using that as a template.

We never played it when Louie was in the band, because it was hard and we've never really finished it. Louie was like, "Why don't you play that song? That song is incredible, we should finish it."

[Louie] brought this new perspective to it that none of us even really thought about. It was another one of those songs that we sat in our room with Adam and Louie and we just went through it and we just finished it. I remember doing the 12 string and doubling up and then layering it and then I remember I did in one take.

That was really fun, because I got to really arrange a lot of parts compositionally that I never got to do. That was outside of punk and power pop; it was like, This has a lot going on. And it was the first time I got to really compose an actual ballad.

"Still Crazy"

I wrote that song while I was still in high school [and] another song that I played for Adam over the phone when he was gone. He thought I said "Steel Crazy."

He just hated that song and just never wanted to play. One day I wrote it down on a setlist, and he looked at it, and he was like, oh, oh, okay. He thought about it for a while and he's like, "Do you mind if I have some ideas for lyrics?" And then we finished that together. And then Jeremy was in the room, so he contributed with "I'm not a monkey in a zoo."

I was like, let's really push how much we can kind of get away with lyrics. We blatantly stole Ramones lyrics: "Gotta knife, I've got an axe/ I chop you up so you better relax"— that is 100 percent the Ramones.  the fact that we did that and got away with it. That was a very funny moment for me where I was like… we can just kind of do what we want. It's really an awakening moment. 

 "Busy Signals"

"Busy Signals" was on [2006 compilation album] Shattered. I did not like that version of it. That record was done without me knowing anything about it; I wasn't consulted or talked to or asked if it was okay. It just came out. I was kind of not ready to have that out. What I thought was my decision ultimately wasn't my decision.

I would have really liked to be a part of that record and have a say. "Busy Signals" was part of the sessions of Guitar Romantic [but on Shattered] it sounded like something completely different, like it was from a different mastering or different session all together.

[For this album] I was like, let's do this properly. I found Louie’s backups that were buried and I brought those up. We had this boss Digital Delay pedal that was what was used all Guitar Romantic and I asked Pat if he still had it. We just ran it through and patched it in. We brought [Louis] up and then gave him a little shine …and just remixed it and kind of made it fit back into the original mold of Guitar Romantic.

 "I'm A Pretender" (King Louie Mix)

It's the same exact mix, same exact thing we just put Louie’s organ up.  The new remix of this was presented as something Louie did himself — which I wish so much that that were true — fortunately, that's not true. Because Louie's passing ultimately was the final nail that drove me to do all this, to move it to a new label to get it away from me personally to just be hands off with it.

I forgot that he played on this song, and we just took him down, because it made the song convoluted. We didn't have Pro Tools; we didn't have automation and we couldn't set a balance that made sense until now. So we got to give him a little shine there. He was mad about that one…he took it home with him and that hurt his feelings. This is my here you go, pal

"So Bored"

We called [the demos with original bassist Jim Evans] the Quaalude mixes because they were so slow, and  clean. And then we brought Matt in and it changed the whole sound of the record. We just sped right up and got right to it. I credited him always with the tempo getting faster.

The Quaalude mix of "So Bored" is on Shattered, but not the actual Guitar Romantic sessions. [The session on the reissue] has a brand new part that I forgot we even did in the studio, a guitar line. So even to me, it was new, and I like hearing it for the first time.  

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Global Spin: Watch Karin Ann Deliver A Sultry Performance Of "She"
Karin Ann

Photo: Cameron Lindfors

video

Global Spin: Watch Karin Ann Deliver A Sultry Performance Of "She"

On the heels of announcing her debut album, 'through the telescope,' Slovakian singer Karin Ann offers a live, full-band rendition of the project's lead single, "she."

GRAMMYs/Mar 28, 2024 - 05:00 pm

On her burning single "she," Slovakian singer Karin Ann beams about a confident, effortlessly beautiful mystery woman — from her unique distaste for modern television to her quaint apartment in the city.

"If someone ever would take her to the dance floor/ The world would disappear, the music would still be playing," Ann croons in the chorus. "Her heart beats so loud, even after everyone is gone/ She'd still be dancing, dancing in her own mind."

In this episode of Global Spin, watch Ann deliver a full-band performance of the track, complete with two guitars, a keyboard and a drum set — and a wall of records as a backdrop.

Ann came up with the concept for the track while searching through her phone during a sleepless night: "I stumbled upon a sentence that sparked inspiration. Most of my songs lean towards the sad or melancholic, but this particular lyric was different. I find it challenging to write happy songs, so it felt like creating this character allowed me the freedom to explore new territories with 'she.'"

"She" is the lead single from Ann's debut album, through the telescope, which arrives May 10 via 3amRecords. As "she" and second single "false gold" hint, the album will explore themes of love, identity and mental health while also showing off Ann's musical versatility.

Press play on the video above to watch Karin Ann's edgy performance of "she," and check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of Global Spin.

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J-Hope's Road To 'Hope On The Street Vol.1,' From Falling Back In Love With Dance To Tying Together His Global Influences
J-Hope performs during the Times Square New Year's Eve 2023 Celebration in New York City.

Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

feature

J-Hope's Road To 'Hope On The Street Vol.1,' From Falling Back In Love With Dance To Tying Together His Global Influences

After 11 years in BTS, j-hope revisits the passion that started it all: dancing. Ahead of his new docuseries and special album, 'Hope on the Street Vol.1,' discover the full-circle journey that brought him back to his roots.

GRAMMYs/Mar 28, 2024 - 04:28 pm

"Just dance," j-hope commands on his 2018 BTS solo track.

For the international sensation, that's what it's always been about: expressing himself through movement. Now, 11 years after the launch of the seven-piece group, j-hope takes a U-turn to where it all began, before his K-pop idol days, street dancing between his hometown, Gwangju, and Seoul, South Korea.

Out March 29, j-hope's new special album, Hope on the Street Vol.1, is a musical ode to dancing that boasts a "vibrant collection of six tracks spanning a diverse array of sounds and moods that showcase j-hope's musical prowess and depth." Like j-hope's global perspective of dance, the EP expands borders and sounds, featuring appearances from HYBE labelmate HUH YUNJIN of LE SSERAFIM as well as American stars Nile Rodgers and Benny Blanco.

The mini-album will also be accompanied by a docuseries of the same name, premiering on Amazon Prime Video on March 28. According to a press statement, the six-part project will "highlight j-hope's story and love for dancing as he begins a new journey."

Ahead of Hope on the Street Vol.1's arrival, take a look at how j-hope's origins inspired the project — from his enrollment in a local dance academy to songwriting with J. Cole on their 2023 single, "on the street."

Finding Purpose In Dance

Long before becoming a global superstar, j-hope (born Jung Ho-seok) first discovered his love for dancing on the playground.

"The school I went to had a dance lesson for 30 minutes in the morning. They would play a dance video, and we would copy it as exercise," j-hope recalled in a 2013 interview for the BTS Japan Fanclub magazine. "My friends around me would praise me, saying, 'You're really good!'"

Eventually, those recess workouts turned into a passion. J-hope began practicing moves at home and freestyling at local talent shows. By the sixth grade, he told his parents he was serious about it, enrolling him in Gwangju's Joy Dance Academy.

While at the Academy, j-hope also joined the underground dance crew, NEURON, building a reputation under the name "Smile Hoya." Though he hasn't participated in the troupe since his pre-BTS days, he still recognizes it as one of the most influential parts of his career.

He'll even honor the crew with Hope on the Street, which includes a track called "NEURON," featuring Gaeko and yoonmirae. He will also return to Gwangju in the closing chapter of the docuseries.

It's not the first time j-hope shouted out Gwangju, either. His 2019 collab with Becky G, "Chicken Noodle Soup," paid tribute to his beloved upbringing: "From Gwangju, one gang of you-know-what/ Geumnam Chungjang Street, that's my Harlem." (The same track also foreshadowed his latest release: "Hope on the street, now it's my own way.")

Forging A New Life In Music With BTS

J-hope continued to have a diligent mindset as a trainee at Big Hit Entertainment. But as revealed in BTS' 2018 docuseries, Burn the Stage, training and dieting became emotionally and physically tolling. At one point, j-hope even considered leaving the group.

"I couldn't do things I wanted to do," he revealed during a 2021 You Quiz on the Block segment. "To be honest, I wanted to play games. I want to go out and hang out. I wanted to stay with my family. I had to give up a lot of things from that perspective."

The stress became so intense that he bought a one-way ticket to Gwangju. But ultimately, the brotherhood and love of music he formed with BTS gave him the courage to return: "I came back because I trusted you," j-hope recounted.

And they trusted him, too: "I told [Big Hit] that we needed Jung Ho-seok. We couldn't debut without him," RM responded. Meanwhile, Jung Kook delivered a tearful speech to encourage him to stay with the band.

The longer he stayed, the more j-hope began to love other sides of music, like producing and songwriting. Now, he has become one of the main writers for the group's tracks, alongside RM and Suga, and has co-penned all of his solo projects, including Hope on the Street.

Spreading His Wings With Two Full-Length Solo Projects

After nearly 10 projects with BTS, j-hope delivered his debut mixtape, Hope World, in March 2018.

"My fantasy had always been making a music video and performing with the music I had created. I wanted to put my own story to music and share it with the world," he told Time magazine upon Hope World’s release.

It's an introduction to j-hope the artist, inviting listeners to step into Hope World, a colorful kaleidoscope of different cultures and styles — something that has also been a key part of his dance journey.

Though, j-hope still wanted to dig deeper into his artistry. He developed his sound, becoming more vulnerable in his lyricism on tracks like 2020's "Outro: Ego." By 2022, he was ready to drop his first studio album, Jack in the Box.

Where Hope World showcases j-hope's dance performance, Jack in the Box highlights "my artistry in music." But Hope on the Street paints the full image of the phenom — part musician, part dancer.

Laying The Groundwork With "On The Street," Featuring J. Cole

One of j-hope's earliest musical influences was J. Cole. The rapper inspired j-hope's stage name and the title of his mixtape, which pays homage to 2011's Cole World. In 2022, j-hope honored Cole with "Born Singer," the BTS re-write of Cole's "Born Sinner." So, a celebratory meeting was in order when they were both scheduled to perform at Lollapalooza (where j-hope made history as the first Korean soloist to headline).

"[He's] my idol," j-hope said to Variety in 2023. Since they met, he "couldn't stop thinking about how great it would be if we could make music together." He reached out to J. Cole, and "on the street" was born.

As j-hope told Variety, the "street" concept became a metaphor for life: "The street is a place where people can actually encounter and feel real lives of people: a child's innocent mind; first encounter with someone and falling in love; someone in an urgent moment;" and so much more. It's the place where he learned to love dance — and where he grew a love for music and artists like J. Cole, who called their collab "a blessing" in the behind-the-scenes footage.

And thus, "on the street" became the springboard for his forthcoming project, Hope on the Street.

Unveiling A Docuseries And A Multi-Part Project

By the tail end of 2023, each member of BTS had enlisted in mandatory military service. But even during the septet's hiatus, j-hope managed to serve up a surprise announcement of Hope on the Street on Feb. 17 with a fitting montage of dance videos.

The joint docuseries and album follows j-hope's journey of self-discovery, accompanying his former instructor, Boogaloo Kin, as they dance their way through the streets of Osaka, Seoul, Paris, New York, and his hometown while meeting other dancers.

"Hope on the Street, my roots, the most important part of my life. This is how j-hope danced. I wanted to share this story with you," he said in an interview for the documentary.

After years of breaking records and making history as a member of BTS, it was "a chance to look back on my life," he explained in another trailer. "I realized the answer was in song and dance."

Culminating j-hope's skills in both art forms, Hope on the Street is a love letter to everything that's made him who he is today — and proof he'll never forget it.

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5 Essential Women Synth Icons: From 'Tron' Composer Wendy Carlos To LCD Soundsystem's Nancy Whang
Wendy Carlos at work in her New York City recording studio, October 1979.

Photo: Leonard M. DeLessio/Corbis via Getty Images

list

5 Essential Women Synth Icons: From 'Tron' Composer Wendy Carlos To LCD Soundsystem's Nancy Whang

Women have long used the synthesizer to create new sonic worlds and inspire the next generation. Read on for five pioneering artists, including Suzanne Ciani and Gillian Gilbert, who have created a unique sound with synths.

GRAMMYs/Mar 28, 2024 - 04:08 pm

A synthesizer is a revolutionary musical instrument that creates (synthesizes) a wide variety of sounds using electricity and a combination of different frequencies. 

The synthesizer now exists in many different forms, but really soared to fame in the '70s and '80s, powered by visionary women. Born from the 1922 debut of the Theremin, an invention popularized by pioneer Clara Rockmore, the synthesizer has since become a staple across all musical genres.

In 1964, Bob Moog introduced the first modular voltage-controlled synthesizer and radically changed the sound and composition of music — the Moog Modular remains one of the most sought-after synths to this day. It was another female synth pioneer, Wendy Carlos, then a music composition graduate student at Columbia University, who worked closely with Moog to refine and develop his iconic namesake synth. Six years later, Carlos brought the Moog to a much wider audience with her GRAMMY-nominated debut hit album, Switched-On Bach.

Thanks to producers like Giorgio Moroder, who transformed disco with space-age sounds on Donna Summer's 1977 dance hit "I Feel Love," synths — then still bulky, complex and incredibly expensive — burrowed their way into popular music. Synths became essential instruments in the burgeoning sounds of the '80s with new wave, synth-pop, house, and techno bringing them to different audiences.

Read on to learn about five women synthesizer legends of past and present: pioneering synth composers Wendy Carlos and Suzanne Ciani, New Order's Gillian Gilbert, LCD Soundsystem's Nancy Whang, Nation of Language's Aidan Noell.

These are not the only women who've made the synthesizer their own and used it to bring us to new sonic worlds and inspire the next generation of pioneering artists, but they are essential names you should know. (Check out the 2021 documentary Sisters with Transistors for further learning.)

Suzanne Ciani

Dubbed the "diva of the diode," Suzanne Ciani is a pioneering electronic composer and modular synth wizard. She's been active since the late-60s creating countless unforgettable and otherworldly sounds with synths, from the iconic Coca-Cola fizz sound to experimental ambient music with younger generations of electronic composers such as Jonathan Fitoussi and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. Ciani performs mesmerizing live modular synth shows, and back in 1980, blew David Letterman's mind with her trippy demonstration of the legendary Prophet-5 synth and her vocoder setup.

In 1968, while getting her Master's degree in composition at UC Berkeley, Ciani met Don Buchla, the creator of the keyboard-less Buchla analog modular synthesizer. She went on to work with his company after graduation, soldering synth parts so she could afford her own Buchla synth. While working there, she asked the founder to teach her and her fellow curious coworkers synth lessons, but after the first class, Buchla told her they didn't want women in the class. The blatant sexism didn't stop Ciani, who put out her debut album in 1970 and moved to New York City in 1974 with her Buchla, soon after landing solo performance gigs at art galleries.

Her groundbreaking career revolutionized sounds in music, advertising, and entertainment. In addition to her iconic Coke sound, she composed jingles for AT&T, General Electric, Energizer and other major companies, as well as sound effects for a Star Wars disco album, and used her vocoded voice to give sound to the Xenon pinball game. Over the years she's put out tons of studio and live albums and has earned five GRAMMY nominations in the Best New Age Album category, demonstrating the genre represents so much more than flutes and chimes.

Wendy Carlos

You can't talk about synthesizers without talking about the GRAMMY-winning pioneering electronic composer Wendy Carlos

Long before Kim Petras became the first openly trans woman to take home a GRAMMY for "Unholy" with Sam Smith in 2023, Carlos took home three golden gramophones for her debut album Switched-On Bach in 1970 (nine years before she came out as trans). The groundbreaking album consists of short pieces of Bach's music played on the then-new Moog synthesizer, an electronic instrument she helped develop with Bob Moog, that would radically change the sound of popular music forever. All three of her Switched-On Bach wins were in the classical category, including Classical Album of the Year and Best Engineered Recording, Classical.

Switched-On Bach was a true labor of love and a smash hit. Working with classical musician Rachel Elkind, Carlos spent over 1,100 hours in the studio — synths then could only play one note at a time. After it was released in October 1968, it hit No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and held the No. 1 spot on the Classical Albums chart for a whopping three years. It introduced people to the future of synthesized music, and also brought new listeners into classical music. Eighteen years later, it was certified platinum by the RIAA, the first synthesized album and only the second classical album to do so.

When Carlos was working on The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, a classical synth album featuring Bach, Beethoven and others, she read A Clockwork Orange and found that her music fit the book's dystopian eeriness of the book. She shaped "Timesteps" to fit the story and sent it to director Stanley Kubrick, who hired Carlos and her long-time producer Elkind to create the soundtrack for his film adaptation of the book. 

The trio reunited in 1980 for The Shining soundtrack. Carlos also composed the 1982 Tron soundtrack on the Moog and a Crumar General Development System (GDS), an early keyboard synthesizer workstation, of which only 10 were made.

Gillian Gilbert

In 1980, Gillian Gilbert joined iconic British new wave band New Order in its creation after the tragic loss of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. She was brought on as the second guitarist to support lead guitarist Bernard Sumner, who was taking on singing duties.

She was one of the handful of talented women working behind-the-scenes at Manchester's Factory Records. She was just 19, in college studying graphic design, working at Factory Records and playing guitar in a punk band. 

She didn't yet know how to play keys or song write, so she took piano lessons and learned to read music. Inspired by their experience in the New York club scene, the band wanted to experiment with synthesizers and programmed music and she played a pivotal role in their groundbreaking sonic exploration.

"There was always a lot of the typical: 'Oh, are you the singer?' No, I’m not the singer, I play instruments. But I never got that [sexism] at Factory Records," Gilbert said in "I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women at Factory Records." 

"There was never anything about macho blokes. We were all one, and I wasn’t any different to anybody else, and the whole Factory thing was like that. There were a lot of women in Factory that gave as good as they got. It was never us and them – it was all just one big family."

In 1983, New Order and Factory Records hit gold with "Blue Monday," a pivotal club track that brought the punk and disco kids together — and the best-selling 12-inch of all time. Clocking in at seven-and-a-half minutes, it was the band's (very successful) attempt to make a completely electronic track.

"It was my job to program the entire song from beginning to end, which had to be done manually, by inputting every note. I had the sequence all written down on loads of A4 paper Sellotaped together the length of the recording studio, like a huge knitting pattern. But I accidentally left a note out, which skewed the melody," Gilbert told The Guardian about "Blue Monday" in 2013.

In 1991, Gilbert and New Order drummer Stephen Morris started side project The Other Two, releasing dance pop bop "Tasty Fish," two albums and a lot of music for TV. The two have been married since 1994 and, when the band was working on 2001's Get Ready, their second child, then just an infant, was diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder. Gilbert left the band to care for her, and was replaced with Phil Cunningham.

Gilbert rejoined the band to record 2016's Music Complete, a welcome return to the dancefloor-ready synth pop they pioneered in the '80s. 

Nancy Whang

In 2002, James Murphy released his debut single as LCD Soundsystem, "Losing My Edge" and needed to quickly form a band to play the gigs he'd been getting booked for off of its success. When he called on his NYC scene friend Nancy Whang to join LCD Soundsystem, her musical experience consisted of taking piano lessons in her youth. 

Whang worked with Murphy and the rest of the band to create timeless, brooding synth pop, evolving their sound a long way from their DIY post-punk days. Her interest in synths began with her love of new wave—the second 45 record she ever bought was from Depeche Mode.

LCD has earned a reputation for well-oiled live performance, in no small part to Whang's deft playing and captivating stage presence, offering a stellar, hypnotizing live show time after time.

Last year, she told Synth History that her favorite synths are the Moog Mavis and the Yamaha CS-80, which she usually keeps in her bedroom and that New Order's second album, 1983's Power, Corruption & Lies is one of the top three albums that transformed her.

Whang also DJs and makes music outside of the band, including groovy dance tunes with John MacLean as The Juan MacLean, one of DFA's earliest signed acts and LCD's influences. Just as her voice is a key instrument in LCD's magic equation, it's been featured in influential early-00s alternative dance tunes like Soulwax's "E Talking" and Munk's "Kick Out The Chairs." In 2022, she joined Aidan Noell, the keyboardist in rising Brooklyn synth-pop trio Nation of Language, to drop a fresh electro cover of one of the earliest Detroit proto-techno tracks, "Sharevari."

Aidan Noell

Like Gilbert and Whang, Aidan Noell is a self-taught synth master. She and her husband, Ian Devaney, along with bandmate Alex MacKay, are keeping the spirit of new wave alive with Nation of Language, their Brooklyn synth-pop outfit inspired by the likes of Talking Heads and Kraftwerk. When Noell and Devaney got married in 2018, they requested donations towards recording their debut album instead of gifts. They self-released Introduction, Presence in May 2020 and quickly started building a following that included loyal support from taste-making Los Angeles-based KCRW DJ Travis Holcombe.

Nation of Language have been touring pretty much non-stop since COVID lockdown ended, but still had time to release a sophomore album, A Way Forward, on London indie Play It Again Sam in November 2021. They kicked off 2022 by making their television debut on "The Late Show with Steven Colbert" and dropped their third album, Strange Disciple, last September.

While Devaney is the lead songwriter for Nation of Language, Noell's deft keyboard and synth skills are an essential part of their recordings and live performance. In 2021, she wrote and released her first solo music — inspired by her love of '80s deep cuts she calls "strange new wave" — on a Behringer MS1 synth, demonstrating her natural songwriting ability. She also taught herself to DJ and is actively creating a supportive community among other indie musicians, particularly with other women synth players, like Whang.

"My friend Michelle [Primiani] [was] the band Glove, she’s one of my synth icons, and she just got the Korg Prologue which is an extremely cool machine. There’s a lot about aesthetics that draws me to synthesizers which seems superficial, but there is a look and feel to certain synths that just draw me in. Ian and I would love to have a MiniMoog. We always talk about what synth we would buy if we won the lottery. We don’t play the lottery though," Noell said in 2021.

Aidan Noell bears the torch for the next generation of the ever resourceful and pioneering synth sisterhood.

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8 Country Crossover Artists You Should Know: Ray Charles, The Beastie Boys, Cyndi Lauper & More
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8 Country Crossover Artists You Should Know: Ray Charles, The Beastie Boys, Cyndi Lauper & More

Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter' is part of a proud lineage of artists, from Ringo Starr to Tina Turner, who have bravely taken a left turn into country's homespun, heart-on-sleeve aesthetic.

GRAMMYs/Mar 28, 2024 - 01:07 pm

When Beyoncé announced her upcoming album, Cowboy Carter, with the drop of two distinctly country tracks, she broke both genre and barriers. Not only did Queen Bey continue to prove she can do just about anything, but she joined a long tradition of country music crossover albums.

Country music is, like all genres, a construct, designed by marketing companies around the advent of widely-disseminated recorded music, to sell albums. But in the roughly 100 intervening years, genre has dictated much about the who and how of music making.

In the racially segregated America of the 1920s, music was no exception. Marketing companies began to distinguish between "race records" (blues, R&B, and gospel) intended for Black audiences and hillbilly music (country and Western), sold to white listeners. The decision still echoes through music genre stereotypes today.

But Black people have always been a part of country music, a message that's gained recognition in recent years — in part because of advocacy work by those like Rhiannon Giddens, who plays banjo and viola on "Texas Hold 'Em," one of two singles Beyoncé released in advance of Cowboy Carter.

And since rigid genre rules' inception, many artists from Lil Nas X to Bruce Springsteen have periodically dabbled in or even crossed over to country music.

In honor of Beyoncé's foray, here are eight times musicians from other genres tried out country music.

Ray Charles — Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962)

In 1962, the soul music pioneer crossed the genre divide to cut a swingin' two-volume, 14-track revue of country and western music.

Part history lesson and part demonstration of Charles' unparalleled musicianship, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music covers country songs by major country artists of the era, including Hank Williams, Don Gibson, and Eddy Arnold. An instant success, the record topped album sales charts and was Charles' first atop the Billboard Hot 200 charts.

Ringo Starr — Beaucoups of Blues (1970)

The Beatles' drummer loves country music. Ringo Starr cut this album, which sounds like something you'd two-step the night away to at a honky tonk, as his second solo project. He was inspired by pedal steel guitar player and producer Pete Drake, who worked on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.

With Drake's help, Starr draws out a classic honky tonk sound — pedal steel, country fiddle, and bar room piano — to round out the album.

Beaucoups includes a textbook country heartbreak song, "Fastest Growing Heartache in the West," a bluesy ramblin' man ballad, "$15 Draw," and a surprisingly sweet love song to a sex worker, "Woman Of The Night."

The Pointer Sisters — Fairytale (1974)

Remembered for their R&B hits like "I'm So Excited" and "Jump (For My Love)", the Pointer Sisters dropped "Fairytale," a classic country heartbreak song into the middle of their second studio album, That's A Plenty.

Full of honky tonk pedal steel and fiddle, the track earned the band a GRAMMY award for Country and Western Vocal Performance Group or Duo in 1975, beating out Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Bobby Bare, and the Statler Brothers; they were the first, and to date, only Black women to receive the award.

The same year the song came out, the Pointer Sisters also became the first Black group to play the Grand Ole Opry, arriving to find a group of protesters holding signs with messages like 'Keep country, country!'

Tina Turner Tina Turns the Country On! (1974)

Also in 1974, Tina Turner cut her first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On!, while she was still performing with then-husband Ike Turner as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.

Containing the seeds of the powerful, riveting voice she'd fully let loose in her long solo career after separating from her abusive husband, the album presents a stripped down, mellow Turner.

She covers songs like Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through The Night" and Bob Dylan's "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," and delivers a soaring rendition of Dolly Parton's "There Will Always Be Music."

Turner was nominated for a GRAMMY award for the album, but in Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female, category.

The Beastie Boys — Country Mike's Greatest Hits (1999)

This Beastie Boys cut only a few hundred copies (most reports say 300) of this spoof country album — reputedly conceived of as a Christmas present for friends and family, and never officially released.

Presenting the supposed greatest hits of a slightly dodgy, enigmatic character – Country Mike, who shares a name with band member "Mike D" Diamond — the album sounds like vintage steel guitar country. Think Hank Williams and Jimmy Rodgers with a dash of musical oddballs Louden Wainwright III and David Allen Coe's humor and funk.

Country Mike appears just briefly in the liner notes of the band's anthology album, The Sounds of Silence, (which also includes two of the album's tracks: "Railroad Blues" and "Country Mike's Theme"), as part of an alternate universe wherein Mike temporarily lost his memory when he was hit on the head.

"The psychologists told us that if we didn't play along with Mike's fantasy, he could be in grave danger," the notes read. "This song ('Railroad Blues') is one of the many that we made during that tragic period of time."

Cyndi Lauper — Detour (2016)

The "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" singer enjoyed herself thoroughly by deviating from her typical style with 2016's Detour.

Road tripping into country music land, Lauper covered country songs of the 1950s and 1960s, including Marty Robbins' "Begging You," Patsy Montana's "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" and Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas" with guest appearances by Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, and Vince Gill.

Jaret Ray Reddick — Just Woke Up (2022)

It might be hard to imagine the Bowling for Soup frontman, known for teenage pop-punk angst hits like "Girl all the Bad Guys Want" and "Punk Rock 101" crooning country ballads.

But in 2022, under the name Jaret Ray Reddick, he cut his solo debut, Just Woke Up. Drawing inspiration from Reddick's native Texas, the steel guitar and twang driven album features duets with Uncle Cracker, Cody Canada, Frank Turner, and Stephen Egerton.

Self-effacing and personable as ever, Reddick heads off questions about the viability of his country music with the album's first track, "Way More Country," acknowledging the questions listeners might have:

"I sing in a punk rock band/ And I know every word to that Eminem song "Stan"/ And I've got about a hundred and ten tattoos / But I'm way more country than you."

Bing Crosby — "Pistol Packin' Mama" (Single, 1943)

Legendary crooner of classic Christmas Carols and American standards, Bing Crosby decided to try his hand at country music with his cover of Al Dexter's "Pistol Packin' Mama," the first country song to appear on Billboard's charts.

The song, which tells the story of a man begging his woman not to shoot him when she discovers him out on the town fooling around, has since also been covered by Willie Nelson, Hoyt Axton, and John Prine.

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