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Atlantic Data was so wanting to land the soundtrack to Amazon Prime Video’s new collection, Daisy Jones & The Six that West Coast president Kevin Weaver went to extraordinary measures.
The ten-part collection, whose first three episodes debut right now, brings to life Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling 2019 novel about an imaginary rock band from the ‘70s who launch their magnum opus, Aurora, earlier than they breakup, riven by the sophisticated, tortured relationship between singer/songwriter Jones (Riley Keough) and band co-founder Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin). The collection is informed from the perspective of the band members 20 years after the break up by way of flashbacks.
With a number of labels competing to launch Aurora, Weaver pressed up faux vinyl copies of the album, full with the Ellemar Data label (the made-up report firm the band is signed to within the guide) and despatched them to the collection producers Reese Witherspoon’s Hiya Sunshine and Amazon Studios.
“The opportunity here felt massive, and it just felt incredibly important to Atlantic with our story, heritage and the label’s rich history in rock and roll and this type of music over decades and decades that we were the partner here,” Weaver says.
Whereas the band could also be faux (and owes a significant debt to Fleetwood Mac’s fractured dynamics and superb melodies), the music on Aurora — which comes out right now (March 3) on vinyl and to digital service suppliers — may be very actual, and was created by a few of music’s heaviest hitters. Grammy Award-winning producer Blake Mills, who co-wrote and produced the album and supplemental songs heard within the collection, collaborated with pals Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, Jackson Browne, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith and others to create the 11 songs on Aurora, plus one other 10 non-album originals which might be peppered all through the collection.
When Atlantic president of A&R Pete Ganbarg heard of Mills’ involvement, he was completely offered. “Not only is he a great record producer, but he understands time and place,” he says. “[Over] a nearly four-year process, he really became the creative voice, the visionary of what this Daisy Jones music was going to sound like.”
The method within the writing room included 10 songwriters composing for round 5 months, says veteran producer/A&R govt Tony Berg, who dealt with extra manufacturing on the album and serves because the collection’ chief music guide. “We had a pretty comprehensive dialogue about what it is to be in a band and what it was to be in a band 50 years ago,” Berg says. “The songs were done with real ambition and never that kind of corny simulation of a song from a time and place, but instead ‘Are these great songs? Would a band 50 years ago or a band today perform these songs?’ That constituted our criteria for whether it was good enough.”
As to how Mills and Berg attracted such top-notch songwriters, they merely opened their cellphone books. They’ve labored with most of the large names concerned: Mills produced Mumford’s latest solo album and Berg produced two of Bridgers’ albums, in addition to her forthcoming set as a part of supertrio Boygenius.
Berg has nothing however reward for the producers from Amazon Studios and Hiya Sunshine for trusting Mills, who was really helpful by CAA’s Brian Loucks, to make the songs sound as genuine as attainable. “That they entrusted this whole project to Blake is remarkable because historically television treats music moronically,” Berg says. “And it was a concerted effort by everyone involved for that not to happen.”
After the songs had been accomplished, Berg and Mills started rehearsing the forged and obtained an sudden profit from COVID. The actors within the band, which additionally embrace Suki Waterhouse, underwent just a few months of deliberate vocal coaching, however when the pandemic hit and taking pictures was delayed, that coaching prolonged to 18 months. “We went into what Frankie Pine, our music supervisor, calls band camp and they rehearsed as if they were a band for months so they could stand up and perform the songs and do a really good job,” Berg says. The actors even performed a gig at SIR Studios in Los Angeles earlier than an viewers. All band members contributed vocals however didn’t play the devices on the album and collection.
That authenticity in each the songwriting and the actors singing their very own vocals “has tremendous importance” in giving the undertaking credibility, Weaver says. “These are some of the most credible, important songwriters of our generation, and so to have significant contributions from them in this music is more valuable than anything.”
Mills recorded the music for the album and the collection at iconic Sound Metropolis Studios, which he and Berg run. The studio, the topic of a 2013 documentary by Dave Grohl, performs a recurring function within the present. “They shot for three or four months at Studio City,” Berg says. “All the studio footage was done here. We remade the rooms to look much as they did back in the day.”
Lead single “Regret Me” has acquired 1.2 million streams, in keeping with Luminate, whereas new single “Look At Me Now (Honeycomb)” is at 207,000 steams and has been serviced to radio. “We’re looking to grow that and with the streaming story and the momentum off of the show release this week, the hope is that we can really drive that to be a meaningful record at multiple radio formats,” Weaver says.
Moreover, every week after the episodes air, Atlantic will drop EPs with the featured music on DSPs. Weaver and Ganbarg add that there will probably be extra shock releases coming throughout the length of the collection.
In an period the place the pop charts are dominated by solo acts — the one rock group within the prime 20 of the present Billboard 200 albums chart is Paramore — Berg hopes the collection and soundtrack reignites curiosity in bands.
“I grew up in an era where bands were everything and the idea of a band with two and three lead vocalists was quite normal — The Beatles, The Band, The Byrds, The Buffalo Springfield, Eagles — they all have [multiple] singers. Today, I can’t name a single band like that. I want people to understand that camaraderie, that competition, but, ultimately, the beauty of a band relationship.”
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