Posts tagged producers
![Produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, “I Feel Love” fused Summer’s breathy, ethereal vocals with a hard, driving synthesizer pulse. Few tracks can lay claim to altering the course of popular music, but the reverberations of “I Feel Love” could be felt in the electro, house and techno that followed in the 1980s and beyond. “It’s basically the blueprint for all electronic music that came after it,” said Peter Shapiro, author of Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco…“It came out in 1977, the same year that [Kraftwerk’s] ‘Trans-Europe Express’ came out, the year that Parliament did ‘Flashlight.’ To me, those are the three great synth tracks.”
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Produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, “I Feel Love” fused Summer’s breathy, ethereal vocals with a hard, driving synthesizer pulse. Few tracks can lay claim to altering the course of popular music, but the reverberations of “I Feel Love” could be felt in the electro, house and techno that followed in the 1980s and beyond. “It’s basically the blueprint for all electronic music that came after it,” said Peter Shapiro, author of Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco…“It came out in 1977, the same year that [Kraftwerk’s] ‘Trans-Europe Express’ came out, the year that Parliament did ‘Flashlight.’ To me, those are the three great synth tracks.”
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“ That’s what females need to do—hold their own, and be confident and have no doubts about what they’re doing. Make everyone else believe.”
“ When we worked on “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength” for her last album, it was kind of difficult. Every singer loses that high end at some point, and for Whitney it came early. It would be impossible for me to comment on whether her lifestyle contributed to that, but I know that when she would come in and rip her coat off and step up to the mic like a race horse, it’s very possible that she didn’t take care of her voice the way she should have. The voice is a muscle, and you’re always taught to go to the gym and warm up and stretch first before you lift hundred-pound weights. She was lifting hundred-pound weights right out of the gate, and probably did some damage to her voice. But Whitney really, really felt that lyric. You know, would it have been a better record if I had the Whitney from 1992? Yes, for sure. But like everything else she touched, she felt every single note of that song.”
David Foster, 2012
“ That’s always hard work—to confront your fears, but it’s also hard work because I know more as a producer…so I’m being responsible for more, and that’s a lot more work…I was always emotionally involved. This time I was technically involved, and emotionally involved…It was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done.”
Luther Dixon…was responsible for dozens of pop classics in the 1950s and 60s and helped shape the classic “girl group” sound with the Shirelles. His songs were performed by artists including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Dusty Springfield, BB King and the Jackson 5…n 1959 Dixon was hired as a producer and arranger by Florence Greenberg, who was intent on establishing Scepter among the many small labels specialising in black pop music. His status on the New York scene meant he was able to obtain part-ownership of Scepter and complete freedom to sign and produce artists. Greenberg paired him initially with a quartet of teenage girls called the Shirelles who attended high school with her daughter.
more on Luther Dixon from his 2009 obituary.
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art: Dixon (left), Greenburg, and Marvin Schlacter, with Chuck Jackson
“…she was kind of like, ‘I don’t know, but I’mma ride with you anyway,’ I knew I was going to have to sell it a little bit, because when it comes on it doesn’t sound like anything that was being done at the time.” Beyoncé warmed up to the sample and then said something that, in his wildest dreams, [Rich] Harrison would have never imagined…”I love the idea,” he recalled Beyoncé saying. “Now write the song. I’ll be back in two hours.”
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The Waiting to Exhale soundtrack was basically a Babyface concept album about adult romance, an album that holds up as this great songwriter’s finest work—but he was smart enough to save the best song for Whitney.
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One of his fondest memories of recording Houston came during their work on the 1988 song, “One Moment in Time,” which was recorded in London at producer George Martin’s studio, Narada Michael Walden said. “It was lovely having her sing in that big room and have all those string and horns come in…and then her voice—phenomenal…Her body would just be shaking with the power of her vibrato.”
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