clive davis
Clive Davis was feeling proud.
In early April, the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment addressed a gathering of more than 500 members of the New York University community and music industry who had gathered in Brooklyn to celebrate the 20th anniversary of NYU’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, the school that the legendary music executive had endowed.
“It’s really incredible to see how far the program has come and how successful the students have been,” Davis told the crowd in a video message (noting he had a schedule conflict with a friend’s wedding). “There are students winning Grammy Awards in major categories, actually dominating the Billboard charts and occupying major positions at record labels, agencies and management companies.
“It’s great to see how my original concept for a new and original music program has become such a successful reality,” Davis added.
“What is my fond hope for the future? I hope students continue to find success and really emerge as the leaders in the 21st-century music business.”
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As if to highlight Davis’ assertion, earlier that same day in April, one of the most successful alums of the school, Maggie Rogers, announced her first arena tour, in support of her album Don’t Forget Me, which peaked at No. 6 on Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums chart.
Among those gathered for this celebration of the institute, which is part of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, were Allyson Green, dean of the Tisch School, who said: “For the past 20 years, the Clive Davis Institute has fostered some of the industry’s most exciting new musical artists and creative business minds. Our outstanding faculty, leaders and staff cultivate an exciting learning environment that allows for both the freedom to experiment and the tools to navigate the competitive music world.”
D-Nice DJ’d the institute’s 20th anniversary party in April 2024.
NYU Photo Bureau
Successful alumni have included not only Rogers (whose career was memorably jump-started by a viral video of Pharrell Williams’ awestruck reaction to her recording of “Alaska” during an institute master class in 2016), but also Grammy-nominated producer Dan Knobler; Noah Yoo and Sedona Schat, aka Elektra Records act Cafuné; production duo Take a Daytrip’s Denzel Baptiste and David Biral, who earned album and record of the year Grammy nods for their work on Lil Nas X’s album Montero and single “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” respectively; singer-songwriter Nija Charles, who shared the album of the year nomination for her contributions to Beyoncé’s Renaissance; and Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt.
The institute accommodates about 250 students who work toward a bachelor of fine arts in recorded music. Its Brooklyn campus, which the program moved into in 2020, offers a seamless flow of spaces designed to inspire creativity and collaboration. Facilities include Oscilloscope Laboratories, the Beastie Boys’ studio formerly located in Manhattan that member Adam Yauch’s widow, Dechen Wangdu, gifted to the school.
The school also hosts its share of guest speakers and performers — Davis, Williams, Alicia Keys, Benny Blanco, Chris Blackwell, Jay-Z, Mark Ronson, Paul Simon, Rihanna and Stevie Wonder among them.
Nick Sansano, chair of the Clive Davis Institute, recently sat down with Billboard to describe the school’s program, which, like the music industry itself, is constantly evolving and rooted in a bit of rebellion.
How involved is Clive Davis in the institute?
What he did was lay out the design and the idea of this holistic curriculum where someone would not just learn about an instrument or be a studio rat or only study music business or legal affairs. His idea was to take everything out of their silos so you have this program that is about music, about music production, about music business — but really what it’s about is leadership, entrepreneurship, thinking holistically, about the future of the industry.
I don’t think he imagined how successful the whole thing would be and how much he would get out of it. He definitely feels that authentic pride, and once in a while he’ll even call with ideas out of the blue. He’s so checked in, and that has been a game-changer for us.
Oscilloscope Laboratories, the Beastie Boys’ studio formerly located in Manhattan, was donated and reconstructed within the institute’s Brooklyn building, including details like takeout menus the group kept on hand.
Carine Puyo
How has the curriculum expanded over two decades?
We’ve always had this ethos around here to push change through and ask questions later, because it could take forever to change curriculum at a university and by the time you do it, you need to go to the next one. It was hard to navigate in the beginning. But the university understood ultimately that we needed to move at our own pace. And we proved ourselves competent. The more we handled our own affairs, the more room they gave us.
The curriculum is always changing as new topics come up and others become irrelevant. New this fall are Reggaetón Revolution, the history of reggaetón, and Creating a Narrative in Audio, a podcasting class from the editorial and journalistic side.
We’re now at a point where we’re very realistic, very pragmatic about what we teach. We have to go beyond the topic at hand and look at it on a really macro level. In the beginning we were trying to set modalities in stone, but we emphasize objectives now more so than specific methodologies because how we get there today will not be how we get there tomorrow.
Much of that evolution, I imagine, is driven by your faculty.
We have a very experienced full-time faculty — a lot of us have been here since the beginning or first few years — and a lot of adjuncts, who will come and go based on what we need. When we do a hip-hop course on the Art of the MC, we have Black Thought from The Roots come in. If we have a Lou Reed class, we go to a biographer. [Author-critic] Will Hermes has taught a number of classes for us. We’re always looking at “What are we offering? Where are the holes and who are the experts in the field or on that very specific topic?”
It’s also a great way to find full-time faculty. When people realize the vibe of the place and sincerity of it… Good people are incredibly difficult to find, and we’ll do whatever we can to keep them here.
Professor Bill Stephney (left) and Chuck D at the institute in April 2024.
Kyra Williams
Isn’t that how you became part of the institute?
I’m a music producer, mixer and engineer, and I came in the first year to give a talk about my work with Public Enemy, Sonic Youth and other New York-centric artists. It was a wonderful experience. The students were asking really thought-provoking questions and getting emotional about it. I said to [the institute], “I’ve never taught before, but if you want to take a chance…” The whole thing was a big experiment. I wasn’t the only experimental hire.
How engaged is your alumni network?
One of my priorities was to change the relationship with the alums, and we’ve made a really conscious effort to reach out. I want alumni to feel as if they never left. When we have an event, when we have guest appearances, we invite all the alums — and the reaction to that has been incredibly positive. We now have 20 years of alums. We have people who have some real influence, and our students definitely benefit from that.
What has been the biggest benefit of moving the program to Brooklyn?
Space, and having all our spaces consolidated. When we were in Washington Square and our Mercer Street location [in Manhattan], we had classes all over the city because we kept running out of space. It was all decentralized. And not only was it expensive, but our students were running all over the place.
Our goal was to centralize everything. We have rehearsal spaces, we have edit suites, we have studios, we have piano practice rooms, we have musicianship labs. We have The Garage, a 100-capacity venue, on the first floor, and we have access to a 200-seat auditorium. We are very self-sufficient at this point, and we designed the space the way we wanted to design it. We began five years before moving in. We saw potential and convinced the university to allow us to hire our own acoustic designers and studio builders.
We had a very specific vision. We want you to walk in and feel as though you are part of a professional environment, and that should dictate what you say, how you act and so on. A place you are proud of. The university loves it. We are the showcase; everyone comes here.
Clive Davis (left) and MSNBC’s Ari Melber at the Clive Davis Institute in 2023.
NYU Photo Bureau
Still, a lot of learning also takes place outside this building. What’s the experiential component like?
We require a minimum of two internship credits, but most students are doing way more than that. It runs the gamut from the obvious major labels to some recording studios to smaller publishing companies. We have someone working full time on establishing and looking after these relationships.
We did a partnership with Atlantic this past year, and part of it was — along with some songwriting camps and some A&R sessions and field trips to their offices — a certain amount of priority internship opportunities for our students. We are trying to solidify more of those executive internship programs.
We prefer when a student comes with an idea and then we vet it. We don’t immediately say no to anyone. And we closely monitor [internships]. There are [labor] laws and there are NYU-mandated requirements, and you could run afoul of both. It doesn’t happen very often, but that doesn’t mean we don’t watch.
The institute’s offerings don’t come cheaply. The NYU website says the university’s general cost of attendance — tuition, food and housing — for the 2024-25 academic year is $87,488. How do you justify that cost and ensure a diverse student body?
We don’t just give people the sticker price and then that’s it. The university works with them, Tisch works with them, and then we as a department work with them on a very personal level. Most of our students who apply for financial aid do get substantial aid. And something new that’s just kicking in this fall is an NYU-wide policy that covers full tuition for students whose families make under $100,000 a year, which is a huge help.
Being so aware of the sacrifice many families make to get their kids here — it affects the overall tone of the institute because we realize that’s how much we need to give back. But we also have to deal with student issues we wish we didn’t, like students who can’t sustain. There are a lot of factors that go into it, including just living in New York, and we get involved with things like housing and food. We have supporters and financial donors that help us with professional development. We are able to do showcases; students are able to travel, to get concert tickets, to go to an exhibit. We just took eight students to Milan for a week. The year before, we took them to Norway. In January, we’ll take them to France. We’ll go that extra mile and subsidize.
Ultimately the goal of the department is to be free, through a large endowment, which we know is possible because we’re seeing it happen. We saw it at NYU Medical School, and we’re seeing it at other universities. [NYU Medical School became tuition-free in 2018 after raising the majority of the endowment needed to sustain the program.]
Professor Bobby Wooten and artist-in-residence Corinne Bailey Rae at the institute in February 2024.
Sam Hollenshead
How else does the institute use financial support to bolster the program?
A priority here is equity having to do with women and music. We’re working with the history that, for so long, women were excluded from production and some other business areas. It’s important to rebuild a certain amount of trust that has eroded over the years.
Our classes now are usually more than 50% women. We have a student-run organization called PAM, which stands for Producers Against Misogyny, and our Audio Engineering Society student chapter is run by women. We support these student groups and their events.
We also host a Future Music Moguls program, which is fully funded for high school students. It’s a whole-day affair on a Saturday during the spring semester where we give a mini version of our curriculum. Engaging with high school students is important to us — and a great way to recognize future talent.
How do you view the overall role of the institute in the music business?
Our ultimate goal is, we would like the music industry to change for the better, but we are not going to do that by banging on the walls and asking to get in. We’re going to do that by busting it out from the inside. Meaning, our students will infiltrate the industry — and we’re seeing that change now.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Clive Davis introduced nine-time 2024 Grammy nominee SZA to present the Clive Davis Visionary Award to her manager and label heads, Top Dawg Entertainment president Terrence “Punch” Henderson and Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, at Billboard’s 2024 Power 100 event last night (Jan. 31).
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The star-studded event bringing together the most influential and powerful figures in music was held at Neuehouse in Hollywood, where the legendary record executive Davis took the time to outline the successes and exploits of Tiffith and Henderson since the launch of TDE in 2004.
“Throughout my career, I’ve always had the great fortune of working with truly remarkable producers who created hits and helped shape the careers of some of the biggest and brightest stars in music,” Davis said. “The executives we are honoring tonight, their names are Anthony Tiffith and Terrence Henderson; you know them as Top Dawg and Punch. They without question share the gift of all those outstanding producers who have made their mark on music history.”
Davis then turned his speech to SZA, whom he called “one of today’s most exciting music artists,” and ran through a number of the accomplishments she has racked up in the past year. “SZA’s latest acclaimed album, we all know, S.O.S., has earned a whopping nine 2024 Grammy nominations, the most of any artist this year, and it includes album of the year, record of the year, song of the year, best progressive R&B album and best R&B song,” he said. “S.O.S. was No. 1 for 10 weeks on the Billboard 200, and — this is amazing — all 23 of the album’s tracks charted on the Billboard Hot 100, with five top 10s.”
He then introduced SZA, who gave a speech that lauded Punch and Top Dawg for their vision in believing in her since the very beginning of her career.
“I was just talking to Punch the other day about how much vision he had to have to see what he saw in me with no credentials,” she said. “I really was looking insane and behaving insane and refused writers and all these things, and he believed in me. People would come to him and tell him he should change how I look, or I should be doing these kind of beats or working with these writers, and he didn’t change a single thing about me. He completely believed and constantly told me that I was the greatest, which I thought was ridiculous, and I was so grateful for his delusion. You know, Top literally also somehow had this belief in me, and I was nothing like any of my family members in TDE, I didn’t come from the same place, I was just a different type of person, and no matter how many times we would have conversations that differed, he would fight to understand me.”
She then introduced Punch and Top Dawg to speak. The latter kept it short — “You know me, I’m behind the scenes all the time; I’m like SZA, I don’t like all these cameras and the limelight,” he said — before turning it over to Punch.
“When you think about a visionary, you have to have foresight. And coming from where we come from — we both come from the Nickerson Garden projects — you have to have vision, you have to have foresight. And usually you don’t; you can’t see past your circumstances, or even see past what’s right in front of you,” he said. “So from there, we went on to be 20 years in in this business. That takes a razor-sharp vision, for sure. Even to help different artists, like a young girl from the suburbs of Maplewood, New Jersey, to reach the top of the pop charts, that’s crazy, and that also takes vision. So to the visionaries, keep seeing things with your eyes closed, and see it through.”
Find the full 2024 Billboard Power 100 list here.
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Diddy might be on the outs in the eyes of many fans and fellow entertainers following the allegations made by Cassie and a few other women at the end of last year, but Clive Davis doesn’t seem to have a problem hanging with the embattled music icon at all.
According to Page Six, Clive Davis extended Diddy an invitation to his exclusive annual pre-Grammy party, should Diddy decide to attend and face everyone who’s become familiar with his alleged antics behind closed doors. After a digital invite for the event was sent out to potential attendees, many noticed that Diddy wasn’t as heavily featured in the video montage as he has been in years passed.
That led to some speculating that maybe Diddy was booted off the guest list due to the allegations thrown at him by Cassie and a few other women who alleged they were subjected to sexual assault and other forms of physical violence as well. Still, that doesn’t seem to matter to Davis as a source close to the matter told Page Six “Puffy is perennially invited to the party. He’s always on the list.”
Per Page Six:
“Puffy wasn’t scrubbed,” they said. “Each year, the photos included in the pre-Grammy gala invitation are updated. Different artists, guests and performers are changed from year to year.”
Combs is nominated in the Best Progressive R&B Album catefory for his latest project, “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” at this year’s Grammys.
We hear Combs has no plans to attend the awards show despite the nomination. But the Grammys did not disinvite him from the show, since its standard policy is that the Recording Academy invite all nominees.
Though he’s denied any wrong doing and vowed to fight for his good name after immediately settling out of court with Cassie, Puff must know it’ll be an uncomfortable situation for him (and others) to attend these kind of events with the allegations against him still raw in the minds of his fellow music industry peers.
Still, don’t be surprised if Diddy returns to the spotlight next year after falling back from public view until everything blows over and people move on from these allegations.
What do y’all think of this situation? Are y’all surprised Clive Davis still has Diddy on his guest list? Let us know in the comments section below.
Armed with just a microphone, a lion-like mane of warm brown curls, and her otherworldly voice, Whitney Houston sauntered onto the Radio City Music Hall stage at the 1990 15th anniversary celebration of Arista Records – ready to bless the packed audience with five minutes of unabashed pop music bliss. She delivered an unforgettable rendition of her ever-enduring pop smash “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Love Me),” the song that became her fourth single to top the Billboard Hot 100.
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Of the three songs Whitney performed at the concert, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” was her only selection that wasn’t a cover. This was the song chosen to best represent the contributions of Whitney Houston, the vocalist, artist and brand, to Arista’s legacy. In fact, the performance – which focused on the magnetism of Whitney’s stage presence, proving the single was still a stunner even unplugged – was a victory lap for the song’s success, which had been raging for over two years at that point.
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Considering the song stood as the peak of Houston’s oft-derided crossover pop hits — the mid-late ‘80s were a period of Houston’s career where she was accused of “selling out” to the sounds of white pop music — choosing to perform “Somebody” was intentional. Instead of teasing the new jack swing-informed sound of her forthcoming I’m Your Baby Tonight (1990), a performance of “Somebody” cemented the song as bigger and more powerful than any discourse around it. “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” was and remains undeniable.
The performance was “a unique demonstration of why [Whitney] was the greatest contemporary singer we have ever experienced in music,” says music industry icon and Houston’s former Arista label head Clive Davis. “It was the most affecting of any of them, the most exhilarating and awesome performance of that song. She took Radio City by storm, the audience screamed for her, she was just raising the level higher than they could have ever imagined.”
Whitney Houston recorded several contenders for the greatest pop song of all time throughout her storied career. While each of them has its own merits – including the ones that did not reach the top of the Hot 100 – the rest still pale in comparison to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” with its singalong chorus, ebullient synths, and towering vocal performance.
The track served as the lead single from her blockbuster sophomore album — Whitney, which spawned four consecutive Hot 100 No. 1 singles (starting with “Somebody”) and helped Houston become the first female artist to debut atop the Billboard 200. Topping charts in virtually every country that had them, the song was the beginning of a new phase of Houston’s career. The Newark, N.J. native was coming off her massively successful Whitney Houston debut album, and it was time to prove that not only was she here to stay, but that she could also compete with the big dogs — and win.
“I wanted to be like, ‘OK, Michael Jackson; OK, Prince; OK, Aretha; OK, whoever’s hot — get back!” says “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” producer Narada Michael Walden. “[Whitney’s] gonna take over everything!”
“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” went on to win Houston a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance, sell millions of copies worldwide and (decades later) become her best-performing song on streaming services. Over 35 years after its original release, Billboard talks to the key players behind “Somebody” about how our pick for the Greatest Pop Song of All Time came to be.
Boys Meets Girl and the ‘Dance of Life’
The story of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” technically begins with the story of another Whitney Houston Hot 100 chart-topper: a love-paranoid slice of jaunty ‘80s pop by the name of “How Will I Know.” Written by Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill – the artists behind pop-rock duo Boy Meets Girl — along with producer Narada Michael Walden, “How Will I Know” served as the third single from Houston’s debut album, and its success earned the songwriting partners new insight into writing more hits for the country’s hottest new star.
“We tried our best not to freak ourselves out because we had to follow [“How Will I Know”] up, and that’s a little challenging because of all your self-doubts,” Rubicam says. “We knew that she could deliver something large.”
First, Shannon and Rubicam had a false start with a song that Davis and Arista rejected – and that the duo ended up keeping for themselves. Shortly after hitting the top of the Hot 100 with “How Will I Know,” Merrill and Rubicam pitched “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” which Davis passed on, as did other label A&Rs. Belinda Carlisle even recorded a demo for it, but after the song stalled in publishing purgatory, the duo decided to record the song themselves as Boy Meets Girl in 1988 – and it ultimately became the outfit’s biggest hit, peaking at No. 5 on the Hot 100. “I can see why Clive thought it wouldn’t be good for Whitney,” Rubicam muses. “It’s more personal of a song, perhaps a little less universal, and I think it didn’t quite have her kind of melodies and verve.”
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Undeterred by the bumpy road for “Star to Fall,” the duo continued to write, eventually stumbling into their next Houston-sung smash. As the title suggests, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” spawned from a moment of solitude. “We lived in Venice, CA, and we started making a habit of going out for a walk around dusk… because there’s something about that dusky hour that makes a person restless and uneasy, or a little isolated and estranged from the world in some ways,” Rubicam explains. “There’s this social pressure, like ‘I should be doing something right now.’”
That feeling of restlessness and isolation led to Rubicam seeing “a visual in my head about going to the club and finding company. Then it morphed into finding someone to love who would love you back and do that dance of life with you.” That general idea carried Rubicam through the first verse, but she found a bit more difficulty with the second verse: “You’ve already got a structure established in the first verse rhythmically and melodically, so you’re sort of doing a crossword puzzle to make the new lyrics fit,” she elaborates.
Rubicam’s method proved successful – and with finishing touches by way of a PPG Wave synth intro (which was “brand new” to the duo, according to Merrill) the demo for “I Wanna Dance Somebody” was ready to be pitched. “I think when we were writing the chorus, we had a really good feeling. We felt confident and certainly enough so to present it to Clive [Davis],” Merrill recounts.
What followed was Merrill having to sprint through LAX to hand-deliver a cassette tape of his and Rubicam’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” demo to Davis before his flight took off.
“We’ve made so many trips to LAX from our house in Venice, so we knew exactly how long it would take,” remembers Rubicam. “So, I headed to an airline that doesn’t exist anymore, it was Transworld Airlines.” Merrill adds, “It’s actually one of my favorite stories of all time, having that moment of running through the airport!”
Clive Davis recalls the encounter similarly: “Sure enough, George met me at TWA, handed me a cassette of the demo with the lyrics to ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody,’ and I heard it on the airplane on my way back to New York.” Once Davis sat with the demo, he heard hit potential in the song’s chorus but felt there was “a lot that could be brought to the fore,” with the addition of a new vocal and track arrangement.
For that, Davis handpicked “How Will I Know” writer-producer Narada Michael Walden to helm the new single. “Once Clive said yes to it, and we heard that Whitney was singing it, Narada was producing it, there’s not very much that could have gone wrong with that combination,” says Rubicam.
Funk-ifying “Dance”
The brilliance of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” results from a combination of well-plotted studio precision and the divine ways in which Houston innately understood how to color a record with her inimitable voice. While Rubicam’s lyrics remained relatively unchanged from her and Merrill’s demo, Houston and Narada’s synergy culminated in an immediate pop masterpiece.
Initially drawn to the “happy and infectious” chorus, Walden could “hear what Clive was liking about [the demo],” but he still felt that he needed to “funk it up” to make it the right fit for Houston. “Because I’m a Black cat, I know Whitney’s African-American, and we want our people to be down,” Walden says. “The demo was just too poppy and not grounded in the funk which it needed to be the smash for Whitney. Immediately, I’m listening to it and going, “Whatcha gon’ do, Narada, to Blacken this thing up and funk it up, so that the people in the ghetto and the nightclubs are jamming too?”
To ground his transformation of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” Walden looked to lessons learned from his mentor Quincy Jones. “My philosophy is the outhouse bottom with the penthouse view,” says Walden. “If it’s got nastiness on the bottom, which is really funky, but it’s very pretty on top, that combination is kind of irresistible.”
So, Walden recruited Randy Jackson — of later American Idol fame — on synth bass, “lined up all different kinds of keyboards,” and employed a very particular approach to recording Whitney’s vocals. Just as Merrill and Rubicam had a new understanding of Houston’s abilities after working on “How Will I Know,” Walden understood that a post-debut Houston would have limited in-studio time because of her grueling promotional schedule. To work around those limitations, Walden and his crew would record the entire song sans Houston’s vocals, so she could easily envision what the end product would sound like.
Following Houston’s debut album — which mostly relied on ballads for its singles, “How Will I Know” aside — Walden knew that “Somebody” had to prove that she could dominate with uptempo pop, and also fit alongside the most forward-thinking pop auteurs of the time.
“Music had made a shift with synthesizers and drum machines,” reflects Walden. “The LinnDrum machines were all the new rage with the hippest cats like Prince, who was smacking us with Purple Rain and sounds we’ve never heard before. Then you have Quincy, who would hire the most death-defying brains to make Michael Jackson’s new sounds. The competition was really high to mastermind a new sound for Whitney.”
With the help of an illustrious crew that included Walter Afanasieff, Corrado Rustici, Preston Glass, Marc Russo and Greg Gonaway, Walden remodeled the original demo in the image of a funky horn-laden anthem of human connection, which could get play in every corner of the world. Nonetheless, two of the most recognizable elements of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” were far from predetermined. The track bursts open with explosive horns that are quite unlike typical analog brass, or even routine synth horns. Walden says the unique horn sounds were the result of an engineer “playing around” with a synth overdub that he had requested. “It was synth horns, but with a glizz on it that made it like something we’ve never done before,” he says. “We glizz the bass, we never glizz the horns!”
Of course, it is Houston’s voice that makes “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” such a transcendent song. During the recording process, Walden was very particular about how Houston’s vocals were cut so that only the best possible takes were used to make the final version of the song. He would have her record the end of the song first, to ensure that the most vocally demanding portions of the track had Houston working at full capacity.
“I would focus her on [the ending] to keep the energy high,” he explains. “Once we got the ending done, now let’s go back and look at that first verse. Now we can get a bit more methodical and technical… I’ve learned this with soul singers: If you get too technical too early, you suck the spirit out of them.” Houston took a few notes from Rubicam’s demo and expanded them into a freewheeling showcase of vocal fortitude. “[Whitney was] a true recording artist, because she just found her way into making a song her own when she liked it,” says Rubicam.
In letting Houston get her fire out at her own pace, Walden helped foster an environment where she led with her spirit, which eventually resulted in her stumbling into the now-iconic “Say you wanna dance, don’t you wanna dance” vamp following the final chorus – the ultimate nod to her amalgamation of gospel, funk, soul and pop. That energy mainly came from a studio session the previous day, during which Houston had the pleasure of stacking her own harmonies for the very first time, boosting her with a new level of fire to finish recording her “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” vocals.
“You’re hearing an excited Whitney on [that song],” Walden gushes.
“When We Saw the Video… That’s When We Knew”
As undeniable as the song is on its own, the success of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is also highly indebted to its music video, which was helmed by “How Will I Know” music video director Brian Grant. In fact, Walden, Rubicam and Merrill all heard the final cut of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” while watching the song’s Totally ‘80s music video for the first time. “When we saw the video and how dazzling she was, just captivating the camera, that’s when we knew ‘She’s going No. 1 with this’ — it was just so powerful,” remembers Walden.
To bring “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” from record to video, Grant was tasked with the challenge of outdoing his clip for “How Will I Know” — Houston’s closest-sounding hit to “Somebody” and an MTV Video Music Award winner for best female video. He first had to tackle the hilariously ironic fact that his star could not, in fact, dance. Instead, he opted for “lots of little scenarios as if you’re turning a page in a magazine.” Even though the individual scenarios – which included Houston bopping along in a cloud of confetti and jamming out in front of a graffitied wall while decked out in a black leather biker jacket — had “nothing to do with the song,” Grant says, he “just wanted to shoot Whitney from lots of different ways, and give her lots of different looks and surround her with dancers who could do most of the dancing.”
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Grant pulled from a few classic MGM musicals to inform the video, but his main goal was properly capturing the effervescence of both the track and Whitney’s vocal. He knew the song itself was dynamic enough because of how the dancers reacted to the music. “There’s something about the way they dance when they know they’ve got something really good,” he explains. “There’s an enthusiasm that you see in the dancers. We just knew it was gonna be a hit. I didn’t know how big a hit, but it was gonna be one.”
Davis specifically tapped Grant to direct the “Somebody” music video, and the Arista boss remained involved in the creative process down to the final cut of the music video. According to Grant, Davis wasn’t too enamored with the initial cut of the music video, urging for a more dream-like version of the clip. To satisfy him, Grant shot a brief clip of Whitney finishing up a performance and then daydreaming of the proper pop video that comprised the original cut. Although he says he “could be wrong” about his hunch, Grant suggests that changes to the music video were spurred by flak Davis was receiving for making Houston’s image “too white.” Of course, “I Wanna Dance Somebody” topped the charts just one year before Houston was infamously booed at the 1988 Soul Train Music Awards.
Davis, for his part, continues to point to the inimitable power of Whitney’s live performance as proof that her music and voice transcended such debates. “She was simply unique,” he says.
“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” Forever
Upon release, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” catapulted Houston to an even higher level of pop stardom. The song became her highest Hot 100 debut in the 1980s (No. 38), reached the top of the chart in six weeks and spent nine cumulative weeks in the top 10 (more than any other single that year), while also topping the Hot 100 Airplay, Adult Contemporary and Dance/Club Play charts, and even hitting No. 2 on R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Worldwide, the song went No. 1 in 14 different countries and has proven to be one of Houston’s most enduring hits, re-entering charts around the world following her untimely 2012 passing, including the Hot 100 at No. 35. Grant recalls hearing the song nearly every hour in Britain once news broke of Houston’s passing.
The song remained a fixture on virtually every setlist Houston performed until her death, a testament to both how much she enjoyed singing the track, and the endless ways in which she and bandleader (and close friend) Rickey Minor were able to transform the song for different live settings. For many of Houston’s performances of the song in the early ‘90s, Minor crafted a “more orchestral and lush overture,” in which “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is teased for a few minutes before “the curtain drops and [the band] starts playing” a version of the song closer to the studio recording. “She had a particular love for this song because it really catapulted her to stardom,” reflects Minor. “It just opened up a whole new era of music.”
36 years after such a tornado of a song and video were unleashed upon the world, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” remains one of the most seminal pop songs in history; the song’s title even became the subheading of the 2022 musical biopic based on Houston’s life and career. This year (Jul. 10), “Somebody” became Houston’s first and only song to amass over one billion streams on Spotify, just the second ’80s song by a solo female artist to do so (following Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”). According to Luminate, “Somebody” still rakes in over two million official on-demand U.S. streams per week. Being named the greatest pop song of the Hot 100 era by Billboard also serves as new validation for its creators about the everlasting legacy the song has built — Walden answers a question about when he knew the song had been cemented in pop culture by replying: “Having this interview and answering this question.”
As for Merrill and Rubicam, they believe that the song has remained so magnetic because “everybody wants that feeling of connection,” citing events as disparate as New York City Pride parades and mid-lockdown Italian nights amid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic as moments where they’ve seen the song give people the solace they’re searching for. The songwriting partners declined to specify how much they generate from “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” annually, but they do say that the song has helped sustain two separate households for two decades and counting.
From its inception to its enduring reign as one of the most beloved and recognizable pop songs of all time, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” remains synonymous with a uniquely human craving for connection and love. “I think it’s really just the feeling that keeps carrying it through another decade, which is amazing,” Rubicam says. “That’s what it’s about, and it’s more than we ever imagined.”
Legendary music executive Clive Davis has spoken out on the devastating terrorist attack by Hamas militants in Israel earlier this month. On Tuesday (Oct. 17), the Arista Records founder who had a hand in the careers of Whitney Houston, Patti Smith and Barry Manilow, among many others, posted a message to social media stating, “I […]
Back row, from left: Juanes, Elvis Costello, Myles Frost, Frankie Valli, Kevin Costner, Jennifer Hudson, Harvey Mason Jr., Rickey Minor, Lauren Daigle, Victoria De Angelis of Maneskin, Thomas Raggi of Måneskin, Ethan Torchio of Måneskin, Latto. Front row, from left: Sheryl Crow, Clive Davis, Damiano David of Måneskin photographed at the annual Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala on February 4, 2023 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
Austin Hargrave
The annual Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala will make its grand in-person return on Saturday night (Feb. 4) for the first time since 2020 due to the pandemic. And naturally, the legend promises it to be the most stellar, most star-studded one yet.
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The 2023 gala will honor Atlantic executives Craig Kallman, CEO and chairman of Atlantic Records, and Julie Greenwald, CEO and chairman of Atlantic Music Group. Atlantic Records’ roster includes Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Cardi B, Lizzo, Jack Harlow and more. The label scored 40 nominations at this year’s Grammys.
While speaking with Billboard days before his anticipated event, Davis reveals that two Atlantic superstars will perform. He also spoke of a duet between a “Latin superstar” and a “major rock hero” — which Davis first teased earlier this week at the Billboard Power 100 event, joking that “I’ve never followed Bad Bunny before.”
Davis also revealed how and when he begins to plan such an impressive party year after year, and shared the one thing he does right after each gala comes to an end.
“The demand for tickets is always intense,” he says. “And the challenge is to provide a show, not opportunities to quote ‘shmooze.’ It’s the show that everybody writes me of the memories.”
But regardless of who shows up and who performs this year, Davis has only one hope, “That it achieves what all the others did: that we have a celebration of music.”
The big conversation point for you this year is that this gala is coming back after three years. When did the planning start?
You know, you cannot plan until the Grammy nominations occur, because if you want someone who should be nominated — and you know that there have been surprises in recent years with people that should have been nominated and got no nomination — so nobody will commit to being in L.A. Grammy week. So we wait for the day that the Grammy Award nominations come out. However, we are no way whatsoever slaves to just have Grammy nominees perform. I mean, I’ve reached back. I thought eight years ago, “It’s time for Taylor Swift to see Johnny Mathis.” I brought out Johnny Mathis and I’m looking at Taylor from the stage and I’m saying, “Taylor, congratulations on all that you’re doing. You’ve probably never seen the next performer because he rarely tours, but he’s up there with Sinatra. The greatest of all time. And an album of his greatest hits was on the Billboard 200 for 10 consecutive years.” She did her trademark gasp and then I brought Johnny on to do his greatest hits. I have a version of that in mind for Saturday night. Something different, which I can’t talk about, but it’s a night that celebrates music.
Yes, Nancy Pelosi is coming for the 23rd consecutive year, and she’ll be there with her husband, Paul. Everybody will be touched that he is well enough to come. But the audience has every year the top leading people who run companies all over the world, music publishers but also networks and motion picture studios and sports representatives. I mean, Magic Johnson comes every year and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Chris Bosh, CC Sebathia… if you love music, you want to be there. So the demand for tickets is always intense. And the challenge is to provide a show, not opportunities to quote “shmooze,” it’s the show that everybody writes me of the memories. That they saw Whitney with Nat King Cole. That they saw Alicia Keys duet with Aretha Franklin. That they saw Rod Stewart at the height of the Great American Songbook sing with Lou Reed and Slash. As I mentioned, I didn’t know I’d be following Bad Bunny [at the Power 100 event]. So it did trigger [me discussing] Latin music, what has happened with him and Rosalia, with Anitta and so many others. I’m really pleased that we have a unique duet Saturday night of a major rock hero with a Latin superstar, and I was very pleased to point that out being in the position of following Bad Bunny. This came from the rock artist that his two songs he would like to do with the major Latin star. And I don’t know whether they ever worked together before. I had not heard of such, but it’s killer, as they say. A killer combo.
The gala is honoring Atlantic Records’ Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald this year. You’ve known them for some time, do you have a favorite memory having worked together?
I don’t work with them. I compete with them. Because Craig is very close with two of my sons, Fred Davis and Doug Davis, we have gotten personally friendly. We are Jewish and we have Passover dinners and Craig has attended with his wife a few of my Passover dinners. So we are really good extended friends, extended family.
When making the guest list, how do you find the right balance between inviting legends and the newer artists that you’re always so good at spotting?
We have every year given the Icon winner an opportunity to pick two artists, and we have about nine artists that we show. So the Icon section usually does not take place until after five or six artists have appeared that have no relationship to the Icon. I can’t tell you right now, but there are definitely two very, very, very talented Atlantic artists performing and I believe that an Atlantic Records artist will introduce part of the segment verbally, which is a nice touch that we’ve never had before. So they’ll definitely be, performance wise, at least two Atlantic artists.
What’s exciting to you in music right now?
What hip-hop has become. My concern was and has been that hip-hop has so dominated not only its own genre but Top 40, that I worry where the next Bob Dylan, where the next Bruce Springsteen is going to come from. I wonder where the next Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston is. It’s not easy, even for the biggest voices that are around, although I’m encouraged by what’s happening with SZA and Jazmine Sullivan and a few others. As I see hip-hop broadening its vision and combining with R&B or seeing artists of pop and folk and rock broaden their horizons, I’m seeing a broadening of musical influence. But we’ve got to make sure as exciting as Kendrick Lamar and Drake are and as wonderful as hip-hop stars are, that we don’t narrow the breadth of what contemporary music is all about.
After the gala, what is the first thing that you do?
We go to the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel and do the postmortem. You know when you have a party, whether it be a wedding or another event, that you want the postmortem to review what happened and get the reactions. You want to stew about it, gossip about it, enjoy it. So that’s what I do.
Is there one postmortem that stands out the most, where you all couldn’t believe what had just happened?
You know what’s surprising, and it happens every year, and maybe that’s why it’s lasted as long, is every year in a heartfelt, honest way, the postmortem is, “This was the best party ever.” I can’t believe how every year, with a straight face, so many say, “This was the best ever.” If you ask me now, reminiscing — we’re going to put together a documentary of the greatest hits of the greatest parties — it’s hard to evaluate which performance or memory was most special.
What is the most memorable or over the top thank you that you have received?
I was leaving Arista and I decided that there’d be only two artists performing at my Grammy party that year. There was Carlos Santana performing memorably with Rob Thomas and Wyclef doing “Black Magic Woman,” Oye Como Va” and “Evil Ways” from the first time I signed him and “Smooth” and “Maria, Maria” from the second. But then Whitney came on after two memorable speeches of what my work has meant to music. One was from Stevie Wonder and the other was from Lauryn Hill, and they were both incredibly touching. But the most touching was Whitney coming to the center of the stage and singing, “I Believe in You and Me,” just to me. And then singing “I Will Always Love You,” just to me. So it was a very vulnerable time in life and it was so touching to see her love. Neither of us thought that we’d be back together again two or so years later. But you can’t top that. You can’t top those songs sung by Whitney personally expressing her love.
Ahead of Saturday night’s gala, what is your one hope for this year’s event?
That it achieves what all the others did: that we have a celebration of music. That they see performances that are among the greatest that they would’ve seen. I’ve gotten so many personal emails from very celebrated people. I’ll give you examples of Tim Cook meeting David Hockney for the first time. Brandi Carlile meeting Joni Mitchell for the first time. Her hero. It was her first year in the audience and I got to know her because we were doing 10-20 interviews together and what emerged was what a unique heroine Joni was to Brandi. Well, I put her at the same table and it changed both [of their lives]. They are so close [now]. So meeting people that they would not otherwise meet, whether it be [Barbara] Streisand, Puffy or Pharrell. Trevor [Noah] is coming this year. Just hearing people when they attend the party saying how special it is for them.
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