Today I'm going to meet a former New Kid On The Block, because he is signing to our label and I am ostensibly doing A&R for it. I think I might shit my pants.

I'm listening to the album right now--it's been finished for a few months--and it's kind of a weird experience. It's definitely pop, and it's definitely bothering me, but it's not like I'm some snot-nosed 24-year-old indie brat who can't listen to two seconds of Z100 without barfing. I genuinely love pop, and I can clearly hear the JT and Ricky Martin and Dido and everything else in this disc, and I'm down with that. But I have some pretty clear and specific criticisms of it, and while I often do of music--I'm something like a music critic these days, after all--I can do something about this. I can address my concerns to the artist before release and he could conceivably change it before we put the disc out.

But it goes even farther than that, because I'm going to get the master tapes, which means I could theoretically go home, load it into ProTools, take out the tepid backing and drop in my own from FruityLoops. Then I could give the new mixes to the label heads and the artist and see if they liked it better.

But I probably won't. I try not to get too invested in this job, as it doesn't really seem worth it. (Since, you know, we sign ex-New Kids, among other problems.) But then again, I'm feeling really punchy today, so maybe I will.
posted by Mike B. at 10:58 AM 0 comments