The first Los Angeles Times Music Producers Roundtable: Hit makers RedOne, Alex Da Kid and Ari Levine discuss Grammy-nominated songs
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On Saturday evening at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles, Times pop music critic Ann Powers sat down with three of today’s hottest music producers for a freewheeling conversation about the state of pop music in 2011. Over the course of an hour, the Grammy-nominated hit makers RedOne (Lady Gaga, Enrique Iglesias), Alex Da Kid (Eminem’s ‘Love the Way You Lie,’ B.o.B.’s ‘Airplanes’) and Ari Levine of production trio the Smeezingtons (Bruno Mars’ ‘Nothin’ on You,’ Cee Lo Green’s ‘[Forget] You’ spoke about the state of pop music, their influences and the stories behind the songs. This first Los Angeles Times Music Producers Roundtable offered revelatory glimpses at the way in which hit songs get made in 2011.
The Times filmed the conversation, and in the next few weeks Awards Tracker will be rolling out video highlights, and Ann Powers will be chiming in with a Critic’s Notebook on her impressions of the Grammy-nominated music and the people who make it.
Times staffer Gerrick Kennedy wrote an overview, as well, in which he relayed a comment that Nadir Khayat, the Moroccan-born producer known as RedOne, made about the way in which he and Lady Gaga started working together:
“I just saw the vision,” he said of Gaga. “I just saw this girl that could be this [huge] thing. We went to the studio and talked about Queen, Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, she knows music,’” Khayat said. “She was inspired. I’ve always thought of music as one; it’s a universal language. That’s what we did with the sound of Lady Gaga.”
The three, Powers noted, have diverse upbringings. Levine was born in Teaneck, N.J., and Grant lived in London until recently relocating to Los Angeles. And though he was raised in Morocco, Khayat found success after he relocated to Sweden. Powers illustrated this global trend with snippets from their repertoire, which offers international rhythms and sounds that cross borders. The result? “Love the Way You Lie” hit No. 1 in 25 countries, and “Bad Romance” did the same in 19.
Read the entire story over at the Pop & Hiss blog, and check back on Awards Tracker starting next week, when video excerpts from the conversation will arrive.
— Randall Roberts
