By Thom Fowler
June 27, 2003
Glen Ballard has won numerous Grammies as a producer and songwriter for mega-stars like Quincey Jones, Alanis Morissette and Christina Aguilera.
Glen believes that the artist must be his or her own path to success. No amount of fancy dance steps and costuming is going to sustain anyone’s stardom if it’s not an inherent part of the artist’s personality. It may sell records but it doesn’t create a career. He is currently in the studio working on a record with 18-year-old Katy Hudson. “She’s going to be a big star,” Glen tells me. With a string of major successes, Ballard may not be off the mark and it will be interesting to see and hear Ms. Hudson when the album is released on his record label, Java Records.
It’s not everyday you get the opportunity to pick the brain of the best in the business and I was fortunate to cross paths with Glen at a marketing conference, of all places. Ballard was giving a talk called, “Life After a Grammy” at the 2003 Promax Conference, a yearly conference geared towards the ad wizards who create campaigns for movies and television shows. I doubt anyone in the audience was seriously wondering, “Yeah, what do I do now that I have won a Grammy?” but Glen has a lot of experience taking musical acts to market and that knowledge is valuable for people who’s job is it to sell it to the audience.
But we didn’t talk about marketing, which quite frankly is really boring, instead we talked about the stuff we really care about: Christina Aguilera, Alanis Morissette, pop music, taking risks and being true to yourself and the process of making an album the Glen Ballard way.
Thom Fowler: As a producer, what part of a person you want to work with or a project that you want to develop is because you see something that you want to bring into the world, what part of that is “there’s a market if we do this right,” obviously everyone has to make a living, but as an artist, you want to give something of cultural value to the world. How do you balance those two things.
Glen Ballard: My first question with any artist I’m contemplating working with is what their goals are. That’ll answer all the questions. If their goal is to make a record, then I’m not interested. If their goal is to really communicate and to have a career, then I’m more interested in that. I’m more interested in trying to find out what makes them tick artistically and really try to do that.
I’m mindful of the trends and the categories that everybody eventually gets put in. I’m not going to take my artist Katy Hudson and say you gotta be a rap artist now because I think it would be really cool. I think putting the round peg in the square hole, it will never work. People can shave it and make it fit for a little while. My thing is really starting with the artist. If it happens to be a little bit out of vogue at that point, I really don’t care.
Thom: You have the opportunity to shape the aesthetic landscape rather than just following the numbers, when you could be leading the pack.
Glen: It’s like hitting a moving target and I don’t do that very well. I did this record with Wilson-Phillips in 1989. It was a huge album but people said I was nuts doing a vocal group with three girls right when grunge was happening.
The three of them sang together, they had been singing together their whole life and you don’t find that that often. Yes they had famous parents but everyone said nobody would take them seriously. I wouldn’t do it if they couldn’t sing and they could so I said, “let’s try it.” Everybody laughed at us but we sold 10 million records.
I’d rather come with something that’s a little more challenging in the marketplace and be an instigator of how it evolves as opposed to just trying to ape the latest thing that’s out there.
Thom: Alanis Morissette really did that. She opened up this whole thing.
Glen: For about five minutes, women especially felt that it was a voice for a lot of things they weren’t able to express. The songs were full of empowering, positive messages for women. I fear that maybe in the last eight years, that message has gotten lost. There’s a younger generation of women that don’t have their spokesperson really, or its somebody who’s not as healthy as she was about really speaking her mind and being an individual and a strong women. Now, a lot of what’s out doesn’t have that much depth. It doesn’t seem to touch as many people. I think its time for something like that to come along.
Thom Fowler: Do you write for an artist or with an artist?
Glen: If the artist is a writer then I write with them if they aren’t a writer than I just write for them.
Thom: What makes a great pop song?
Glen: Melodically, it’s gotta have something that is interesting and memorable and lyrically, it’s gotta convey the emotion, or fun. It comes in all shapes and sizes but I think a pop song has to convey a clear message. You shouldn’t have to guess what it’s about. Most people aren’t going to take the time to try to unravel what it is you are singing about. I always try to strive for clarity. Not simplistic, but clear and to me that is the whole mission statement of anybody who does what we do, communicate. You have three and half minutes to make your point and get off. The craft of it is important.
For me, in a song, the chorus is the topic sentence and the general idea and the verses provide the detail. For me, the verses provide the specificity that lead up to the big idea, the topic sentence, why this song is here.
Thom: How much of songwriting is craft and how much is it inspired poetic madness?
Glen: I like to go for poetic madness right out of the box. I know the craft sufficiently that to me the craft exists outside of the creative moment. You access it the moment you have an idea that’s worth having. I usually stop by hitting a phrase musically or lyrically that’s interesting. A beat or chord progression. The craft of it is important but it’s not what makes something special.
Thom: When you worked on Jagged Little Pill, what was that creative partnership like?
Glen: Alanis would come in my studio and pick up a guitar and start writing, just channeling. She had lyrics for days, it was just sort of bits and pieces, collages of ideas, journals, everything. Once we got the flow of everything, I would dial up a beat on the drum machine, and then start grooving on the guitar. She would tap into it and start writing.
She’s very prolific and she’s always writing. She thinks out loud and she does these remarkable things with words. She can hotwire sentence. She’s just a remarkable lyricist.
Thom: How did Jagged Little Pill end up on Madonna’s label, Maverick Records?
Glen: We made the record before we tried to get a record deal. It was a handmade project that we got excited about. We had a hard time getting it signed. It was passed on by several labels. Maverick was perfect. They were new and feisty and knew what do with it.
Thom: You mentioned your artist Katy Hudson, is that Kate Hudson, the actress?
Glen: No, I don’t think anyone will confuse Kate Hudson for Katy Hudson once this record is out.
Thom: What is Katy Hudson’s style like?
Glen: It’s in the Alanis Morissette singer/songwriter female, that’s the box you can put her in but I don’t think she’ll stay in that box long. She’s such a huge star and a great singer and a complete person. We don’t put out many new records so I really want this to be great. I’m mostly working on other stuff, but this one’s a winner.
Thom: What other stuff have you been working on?
Glen: Most recently I did some tracks on Christina Aguilera’s album, I produced and wrote a couple things on that. We wrote two songs together.
Thom: What was it like to work with Christina Aguilera?
Glen: It was fun. She stepped up and really made a statement about herself rather than having other people write for her. I think it works. She’s a fighter. I think after Genie In a Bottle, which is a fun, cute song, she said, “I don’t want to do that anymore. I actually can’t if I have any credibility left.” She’s a marvelously talented singer. On this second album she shows a tremendous amount of coming into her own as an artist and a person. She’s expressing it and people are getting it and she’s the author of it. I’m proud of what she did.
Thom: Is it better for a female artist to own her image or is it better to for her to be a package?
Glen: If somebody has a strong sense of themselves in the way they present themselves in real life, they are probably going to want to have a lot to do with shaping the image that you take into the marketplace. I think one of the biggest mistakes are when people are packaged and it’s really incompatible with what their true personality is. I’ve always encouraged the artists that I work with to really take an active role in putting together the whole package.
Thom: Can you think of any examples of anyone who has been packaged rather than enhancing their inherent personality?
Glen: I’m sure there are examples but I don’t want to slag any of my fellow producers. Those things are usually in and out. It’s kind of like chasing the cultural zeitgeist which changes every five minutes. Some people guess right and get it. But by the time there is another trendy thing, that person or that artist has to reinvent. [Personal style] is what distinguishes them out there in the noisy world of the marketplace.
Ostensibly if you are working with somebody that is talented and interesting, you don’t have to give them any personality. I don’t want to work with anybody that does exactly what they are told. It’s not the spirit of Rock and Roll.
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