songwriter
Instead of doing her homework one day after school, the multihyphenate born Atia Boggs used her time for a different assignment. She had just bought Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and recalls coming home, sitting down and writing all the lyrics on flash cards. “That’s when I realized how important a good song was and how substance matters,” says Boggs, now 37 and known as the songwriter–producer INK. “And that really inspired me in a whole new way… I learned how to create my own path.”
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She taught herself guitar and started street performing, walking “miles on miles” from downtown Atlanta to the residential Buckhead neighborhood “playing for pennies.” Without any music industry connections, INK sought a mentor online, searching for her favorite songwriters such as James Fauntleroy, with whom she became Facebook friends in the late 2000s. “He was a mentor for me in the very beginning,” she says. “That gave me the confidence to say, ‘I can do this.’ ” Her first big break came in 2019, after she had co-produced and co-written Chris Brown’s song “Don’t Check on Me,” which featured Justin Bieber — and Brown decided it should feature INK, too. “It gave me so much exposure and another boost of confidence to have a superstar say, ‘Hey, we’re going to introduce you to the world.’ That was one of the moments that led to the unstoppable train I’m on now.”
This year has proved to be INK’s biggest, and busiest, yet — but she teases 2025 will be even crazier, as she’s working on her own music and a documentary while continuing to collaborate with music’s upper echelon.
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Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter
“Beyoncé was definitely a catalyst for the freight train to keep going,” says INK, who started working with Bey before COVID-19 hit on Cowboy Carter tracks including “Ameriican Requiem” and “16 Carriages.” INK recalls how, in 2019, they met at Roc Nation’s Grammys week brunch: “We have an inside joke because I went up to her and said, ‘Hey, I just wanted to let you know, I’m going to be writing your next album.’ And she giggled and said, ‘What’s your name?’ We just hit it off.” Soon after, INK was working with producer Ricky Reed, who introduced her to Beyoncé’s A&R executives. “They said, ‘We would love to have you be on this journey with us from the start.’ And five years later, Cowboy Carter was delivered.”
INK was friends with Lopez’s A&R executive long before he had the gig. So when it was time to assemble a team for Lopez’s personal album This Is Me… Now, he told INK, “You’re the first person I thought of for this.” INK most loved how “there’s not a session that happens without [Lopez]… I remember one time, she was like, ‘Hey, pull up today, but I’m going to send you a different address.’ And it’s the movie set [for Atlas]. We’re recording parts from the album in her trailer, and she comes in covered in blood, wet, cuts, bruises all over her body. And then she’s on the mic recording the song that we just wrote in her trailer. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and it just showed the work ethic.”
Latto, “Look What You Did”
INK has long worked with Latto’s producer, Go Grizzly, another Atlanta native, but she had yet to work with the “Big Energy” rapper herself until this year. As INK recalls, she and Grizzly were working in Paris when they “cooked up the beat” that became “Look What You Did,” off the rapper’s third full-length album, Sugar Honey Iced Tea. “We did a beat in the studio, and then he was like, ‘Yo, you already know we have to get Latto on this.’ She heard it, she loved it and snapped.” INK had previously worked with Mariah the Scientist, who featured on “Look What You Did,” earlier this year when she guested on 21 Savage’s American Dream album. “So the dots connected,” she says.
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“I try not to listen to pop radio, ever,” Amy Allen proclaims as she scrolls through Spotify on her phone. The singer-songwriter is recapping her recent listening: She has been on a Vince Gill kick; she always has The Cardigans in rotation; she recently discovered Donna Summer’s 1974 single “Lady of the Night”; she’s a fan of indie star Adrianne Lenker of the band Big Thief. Allen goes for early-morning runs on the boardwalks of Venice Beach in Los Angeles near her home, and while she used to soundtrack them with a classic rock playlist, for the past six months she has been blasting ABBA’s greatest hits, starting each morning jogging to “Dancing Queen” and “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).”
Allen has plenty of pop radio classics in her queue — but new pop is never in the mix. “It’s a very concerted effort I make to not do that, and to try to be influenced by things that I love and not what’s current,” Allen explains, “because what’s current now is not going to be current by the time anything I write comes out.”
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Whether she hears today’s biggest hits or not, Allen is now the one doing the influencing when it comes to the shape of current pop. After years of bouncing around the industry and absorbing sonic ideas, the 32-year-old from a small town in Maine has found her niche in studio sessions with superstars, braiding her appreciation of dense lyricism and 2000s bubblegum — “I’ve always loved a big pop chorus and I’ve always loved intricate storytelling,” she says — into an ability to create hits perfectly suited for the TikTok era, but likely to last long beyond it.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, which spent three weeks atop the Billboard 200 following its August release, has been Allen’s highest-profile win as a co-writer to date, with three smash singles (“Espresso,” “Taste” and Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Please Please Please”) full of idiosyncratic one-liners that have helped augment Carpenter’s inventive wit and transform her into an arena headliner. Yet Allen’s studio résumé preceding that breakthrough — credits on songs by Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Timberlake, Jonas Brothers, Maren Morris, Koe Wetzel and Niall Horan over the past 18 months alone — underline her status as a collaborator who helps A-listers at all stages of their careers land the right level of emotional punch and unlock the viral-ready turns of phrase that will transform a song into not only a hit, but a cultural moment.
“She knows how to articulate feelings in a way that most writers would envy,” says Tate McRae, who tapped Allen for the majority of her 2023 album, Think Later, including its slippery rhythmic-pop hit “Greedy,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100. “I feel incredibly lucky to have written my last album with Amy, and I sincerely look forward to all that is to come together in the future.”
Joelle Grace Taylor
Two years after landing her first songwriter of the year, non-classical nomination at the Grammy Awards (she was one of the inaugural nominees for the relatively new honor), Allen seems like a shoo-in to get a nod for the 2025 ceremony — and potentially become the first woman to take home the prize — thanks to the whirlwind success of her past year. Yet her manager, Gabz Landman, points out that, even if Allen is now hitting critical mass, she was a force in the songwriting world years before she was nabbing headlines, now six years removed from co-writing her first Hot 100 No. 1, Halsey’s “Without Me,” and two years after winning an album of the year Grammy for contributing to Harry Styles’ Harry’s House.
“She was an athlete growing up and still runs marathons, and I think a big part of her writing career is this incredible stamina,” says Landman, who’s also a vp of A&R at Warner Chappell Music. “Amy doesn’t quantify or feel proud of things based on chart metrics. She gets contacted by many people to collaborate, and it’s always about whether she’s inspired by [an opportunity] more than ‘What is this person’s standing in the music industry?’ ”
That outlook helps explain why, days after Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet gave Allen a dozen new Hot 100 writing credits, she independently released a self-titled solo album of her own: a 12-song set full of quiet arrangements and understated melodies that sound as far removed from top 40 as possible. The project is the opposite of an iron-hot cash grab — Allen says that some of its songs date back to six years ago, before her songwriting career took off, and they were too meaningful to leave unreleased.
“One of the reasons why I love Amy is because I really see the both-ness in her — she’s a songwriter and she’s a solo artist,” says Jack Antonoff, another studio whiz who also releases his own music with Bleachers. After Antonoff and Allen worked on four songs together for Short n’ Sweet, including “Please Please Please,” he invited her to open for Bleachers overseas during their summer tour. Allen will also support the band at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 4.
For Allen, her co-writing career and solo work represent two separate parts of her creativity and manifest through disparate processes. “When I’m writing with and for somebody else, I always start with the chorus — listening back to the great pop songs of the ’60s and ’70s through today, the chorus is the crux of the song,” she says. “When I’m writing by myself, I always start with the first verse and I just tell the story in a through line, start to finish. That helps me keep them separate, and it allows me to still keep falling in love with songwriting all the time.”
Joelle Grace Taylor
Allen didn’t know which musical role she wanted to play when she was growing up in Windham, Maine: Her first experience performing was in her older sister’s band, which needed a bassist and tapped Allen, even though she was 9 and had never played the instrument. After kicking around the music scene in nearby Portland as a teenager, Allen went to nursing school at Boston College (“As a mistake,” she quips) before transferring to Berklee College of Music, despite not knowing any theory or even how to read sheet music.
“I was literally failing all of my classes,” Allen recalls, “but I could at least skate by in some of the songwriter classes. The class that helped me the most was actually this poetry class, where we studied great lyricists and poets. Something in my brain clicked about lyric writing, the cadence of rhymes and lines — the little things that might make people roll their eyes and be like, ‘Oh, that’s so songwriter-y.’ ”
After graduating, Allen fronted the pop-rock group Amy & The Engine, playing around New York in the mid-2010s before the band broke up and she committed to sharpening her skills as a solo writer. In late 2017, Allen was packing up for a West Coast move, and in her final New York session, she presented songwriter Micah Premnath with a melodic concept that had been stuck in her head — which, after some lyrical workshopping, morphed into “Back to You,” a top 20 hit for Selena Gomez. Soon after Allen touched down in Los Angeles, she linked with producer-songwriter Louis Bell to help make “Without Me,” then contributed to Styles’ “Adore You,” which turned into his first Pop Airplay chart-topper as a solo artist.
Allen’s transition from fledgling writer to hit-maker may have been sudden, but she had been studying the greats for a while. She grew up admiring Carole King, John Prine, Dolly Parton and Tom Petty, while also analyzing Max Martin’s pristinely crafted hits for Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. By the time she attended Berklee, Allen had started to identify her favorite studio minds and study their discographies. “I remember listening to my favorite pop songs, and Julia Michaels was behind all of them — it was like, ‘Who is this chick that is soundtracking my college years?’ ” she recalls with a laugh. Now Allen and Michaels share credits on five Short n’ Sweet tracks and sing background vocals together on the song “Coincidence.” (Allen also harmonizes with Carpenter on “Espresso.”)
Amy Allen photographed on August 20, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Like Michaels, Allen has developed a knack for taking straightforward lyrical phrases and contorting them until they stick in your cerebrum — think Carpenter declaring, “That’s that me, espresso,” or McRae exclaiming, “Obvious that you want me, but/I would want myself.” While Allen says she would probably have more 10-second hooks at the ready if she paid closer attention to TikTok, the majority of her biggest co-written choruses have resulted from actual conversations with artists — common ground discovered, then whittled down into universal refrains.
“Production trends turn over and change every six months, in my opinion,” she says. “But I think a great song, if it’s stripped down to guitar and piano, melody and lyric — it doesn’t change a ton.”
With Carpenter — whom Allen started working with for her last album, 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, contributing extra bite to tracks like “Vicious” and “Feather” — Allen has found a confidante and kindred spirit, unafraid to embrace a double entendre or, in the case of the “Please Please Please” chorus, a well-placed “motherf–ker.” Antonoff says that he, Allen and Carpenter knocked out three songs for Short n’ Sweet, including “Please Please Please,” in a single day together at New York’s Electric Lady Studios, often taking breaks to double over in laughter. “The depth of the d-ck jokes just goes on and on,” he says, “and then a song can happen randomly — that’s the magic of a studio space.”
Short n’ Sweet earned 1.2 million equivalent album units in just its first three weeks out, according to Luminate, with 11 of its 12 tracks reaching the Hot 100’s top 40. Allen says there are “so many reasons why I feel like I owe Sabrina my first-born child,” but the album’s commercial success isn’t the biggest one.
“Her musicality and personality blow me away every time that we work together,” she says of Carpenter, “but I’m also so grateful to her because I’ve never gotten to be part of every song on an album before. That’s so in line with what I grew up loving — digging in like that.”
Joelle Grace Taylor
Landman notes that one sign of Allen’s growth is her increased involvement in major pop projects beyond a co-write or two: Along with all of Short n’ Sweet, she contributed to six songs on Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was, six on Wetzel’s 9 Lives and eight on McRae’s Think Later. Landman chalks that up to two reasons: She picked the right collaborators, and, post-pandemic and post-Zoom sessions, in-person studio hangs have let her personality shine. “She’s had a great rapport with so many artists that have turned into friendships,” Landman says. “And I think that people have noted [that] if you’re winning with somebody, keep doing what you’re doing.”
Allen is heeding that advice as she continues picking up co-writing projects and supporting her self-titled solo debut. Releasing an album under her own name has made her realize that the paths can coexist after previously thinking it impossible. “The last year-and-a-half has made it crystal clear in my brain that I only live once, so why do I have to pick?” she says.
Allen likens the balancing act to the way that any songwriter must find a happy medium between working at a breakneck pace and accruing enough life experiences to have something to write about. Amid a whirlwind professional year, “in terms of taking time off, I’ve done that more this year than any other year in my life,” Allen says. “And I’ve been writing my favorite songs I’ve ever written.”
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Linda Perry is well aware of the qualities that have made her a world-class songwriter, producer and go-to studio magic-maker. But asked to define what she thinks her strong suits are, Perry tells Billboard that she is, “pretty tough, I’m aggressive, I’m a pretty powerful person,” but also, “very talented, I’m smart, I’m a great mom, I’m a great friend… I’m all these things, I’m a great songwriter, but sometimes you lose your way.”
That why, even with all those sparkling qualities, Perry said, sometimes you lose your way. That dichotomy is at the heart of Linda Perry: Let It Die Here, the documentary about Perry’s work and life that debuted at the Tribeca Festival in June. “In real time I kind of figured things out, I’m still putting the pieces together,” she says. “I don’t think, honestly, anybody truly knows who they are until they can be at one with everything. I guess I’m trying to get to that point where I don’t have a reaction. Because reactions are emotional.”
Perry opens up in the film about her journey from fronting early 1990’s band 4 Non Blondes — famous for their 1993 Billboard Hot 100 No. 14 hit “What’s Up” — to becoming an in-demand songwriter and producer for everyone from Adele and Christina Aguilera to Dolly Parton, P!nk, Miley Cyrus, Celine Dion, Ariana Grande and Alicia Keys. Director Don Hardy speaks to the singer, as well as her family, friends and colleagues in the 90-minute doc that also features new performance and recording footage.
“I didn’t even know we were making a documentary,” Perry says of the process of filming that took place as she was beginning to unpack some hard truths about her childhood and past trauma — which included mental, physical and emotional abuse — as well processing her mother’s dementia diagnosis and her own health issues. She’d met Hardy years ago when she scored his doc Citizen Penn, about actor Sean Penn’s efforts to help Haitians in the wake of 2010’s devastating 7.0 earthquake.
“One day he was like, ‘you’re so interesting. Do you mind if I’m like a fly on the wall in your studio?,” she recalls. As Hardy hung around, Perry says she began “unraveling,” and it wasn’t until the director came told her he’d shown a 30-minute edit of the footage to some people and they agreed there was a movie in there somewhere. She said go for it and gave them the green light to start the film, just as her and her mother were both hit with health crises.
“All of that was happening in real time,” she says. “It all makes sense now, like how I had to unravel in real time. If I would have thought about it, if I knew it would was gonna happen, never would have approved anything like this.”
The film has allowed Perry to let all of that go, which is why she wanted it to be called Let It Die Here; she wrote a song for her mother with that title. “I’m not a liar. I am about as honest as you will find on this planet,” Perry adds of her no-b.s. songwriting process and how everything she writes is true, even if it’s about another person.
At some point, though, she was having trouble writing songs for others because she couldn’t figure out how to tell her words through someone else’s experience. “It started to feel like a lie to me,” she says of her decision to focus on scoring film and TV. Watch the full interview with Perry above.
The ASCAP Foundation has launched the new “In Her Voice” scholarship which will provide funds to female-identifying music makers who are trying to break into the songwriting field. “In Her Voice” Scholarship will be granted to two undergraduate or graduate students who are female-identifying and are ASCAP members or have not affiliated with any other performing rights […]
“Losing My Religion” was the unlikeliest of hits for R.E.M., Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush” was created at a girls’ songwriting sleepover weekend and, “yeah,” that’s Timbaland’s voice you hear on Justin Timberlake’s hit “SexyBack.”
Ahead of the 53rd annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala on Thursday (June 13) at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York, some of this year’s inductees and honorees share stories behind their biggest hits and the songs that hit closest to home, in their own words.
The 2024 class consists of Hillary Lindsey, Dean Pitchford, R.E.M., Steely Dan, Timbaland and the late Cindy Walker. Diane Warren will be honored with the Johnny Mercer Award and SZA will receive the Hal David Starlight Award.
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Hillary Lindsey
“Girl Crush” Co-written with Lori McKenna, Liz Rose Recorded by Little Big Town
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The Grammy-, CMA- and Nashville Songwriters Association International-winning song that spent 13 weeks at the top of the Hot Country Songs chart in 2015 had a spontaneous start. “The three of us are dear friends and once a month we’d do two-night sleepovers at Liz’s house and dive into writing. This was one of those times,” Lindsey says. “I didn’t know it, but Lori had this title ‘Girl Crush’ in her head, and she apparently asked Liz and Liz had said the title sounded cool but might be too hard. I came in and Lori asked me, ‘What do you think about this title?’ It could’ve gone lots of directions, and it was one of those miraculous moments that can happen when you’re creating. I picked up the guitar and played chords and the words just started popping out. It was one of those songs we didn’t put a lot of thought into. We were all throwing out lines and we probably wrote it in 45 minutes.
“Then the girls of Little Big Town were coming over for a write-in. Karen [Fairchild] said, ‘Do you all have anything you’ve written that you love?’ And Liz was like, ‘Well, we do have this song we wrote this morning.’ I was scared out of my mind; I thought we needed to make it sound better. We’d just put it down on our phones on a voice memo so we wouldn’t forget it. And they both just sat there in silence with their eyes real big and we were like, ‘Do you hate it? Do you love it?’ And then they were like, ‘Oh my God, this is a beast of a song.’ Jay Joyce [the producer] took it to the utmost next level. It was otherworldly. He heard it in its raw form and the band just made it shine.”
Dean Pitchford
“Footloose” Co-written and recorded by Kenny Loggins
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Loggins was Pitchford’s top choice for the Footloose title song, which spent three weeks at No. 1 and was nominated for an Oscar in 1984 — and Pitchford went to great lengths to seal the deal. The soundtrack, which produced six Hot 100 top 40 hits, knocked Michael Jackson’s Thriller out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, where it spent 10 weeks. “Kenny had a very big pop career at that point. He sort of auditioned me by giving me a cassette with a melody he and Steve Perry had come up with. All he would say is it was called ‘Don’t Fight It.’ So I wrote the lyric, and he and Steve loved it. They recorded a duet and got a Grammy nomination. And we found out about the nomination while we were in the trailer at Paramount on preproduction on Footloose,” Pitchford says.
“I came to him with the movie script and said, ‘I want to work with you to write the title song.’ He was seduced by reading the script. Paramount was not taking for granted that I had Kenny onboard until they heard something. And then something happened that put us into a great bind. At a gig in Utah, Kenny came out in the dark and walked off the edge of the stage and broke three ribs. He was laid up and recovering because he was leaving for a tour of Asia in four weeks, and now the clock is ticking. I finally got a call from his manager, who said he was going to play one weekend in Lake Tahoe before he goes to Asia and, ‘If you can get yourself to Tahoe I can put you in a room with Kenny.’ The night before I came down with strep throat; I never mentioned it to Kenny. I called it our house of pain because I was running into the bathroom and spraying my throat with Chloraseptic and he was strumming the guitar, which was obviously causing pain. We ended up creating the verse and the chorus of the song. And I had enough to go back to L.A. and say to the executives, ‘He’s in.’”
R.E.M.
“Losing My Religion” Written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe
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The second song on the band’s seventh album, Out of Time, spent 21 weeks on the Hot 100, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2017 and in 2022 reached one billion YouTube views. But as Mike Mills recalls, it didn’t scream hit. “It’s a five-minute song with no chorus and the lead-in is a mandolin. It was a really cool song… but that is not a recipe for a hit single. We never really thought about songs in terms of, ‘This is going to be a big hit.’ We just wrote the best songs we could. And we always tried to make timeless records. That song was driven by our desire to explore different instruments and ways of writing, [since] we were really writing good songs at that point. And it tapped into a zeitgeist that really worked. I believe in the record company’s mind it was sort of a warm-up track for ‘Shiny Happy People’ or some other thing they thought would be a big hit,” he says.
“Peter [Buck] had begun playing the mandolin all the way back to [our 1988 sixth album] Green and was becoming very proficient, and he came up with basically the whole song. As I remember, when he showed it to us it was fully formed so all we had to do was come up with our parts. I was having a little difficulty with the bass line. It needed to have some element of identity without getting in the way of the mandolin. And I thought, ‘What would John McVie do? I tried to put myself in John McVie’s head and came up with a very simply change that, to me, made all the difference. It’s a simple low F sharp before the minor E chord. That’s all it was, but it gave the song a little bit of darkness. It’s the only time I recall turning to another bass player for help, as it were.”
Timbaland
“SexyBack” Co-written with Justin Timberlake, Nate “Danja” Hills Recorded by Justin Timberlake
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Co-written and produced by Tim Mosely, aka Timbaland, the song that served as a re-introduction for Justin Timberlake was certified three times platinum by the RIAA and delivered him a No. 1 on the Hot 100 in September 2006. “It all started by really being bold,” Timbaland recalls. “We knew people were going to love it — and we knew especially the women would go crazy. Because it was a call-to-action song. It makes you feel good and has something about it that gets your attention. What we were going for was that old David Bowie sound, back in the day when rock n’ roll was in a disruptive space. We were trying to re-create that in [Timberlake’s 2006 sophomore album] FutureSex/LoveSounds. We were going for something different. I thought the way Justin approached it was so futuristic but felt so nostalgic that I knew it was going to shock the world. People were used to him coming off *NSYNC. And the funny thing is, the label came in and they were like, ‘What is this?’ But we knew what it was. We knew it was disruptive. It’s like that Michael Jackson Thriller moment.”
“When we were coming up with the song, Justin was like, ‘This song feels like I’m bringing sexy back.’ And I said, “Yeah.” The way I talk is in rhythm, so ‘yeah’ came out [and] it just fit in the track. And he was like, ‘This is it; this is the song.’ And I thought we should really swag it out, so we did. I was more fascinated about the sound taking over the world than it being No. 1, to be honest. I think what we did was we made dance music come back. And that to me was the moment. My real impact was, ‘Did we change how people view [Justin]?’ Yes, we did that.”
Diane Warren
“I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing,” recorded by Aerosmith; “Here’s To The Nights,” recorded by Ringo Starr and friends
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Warren delivered Aerosmith’s only No. 1 on the Hot 100, where it remained for four weeks in 1998 — one of the songwriting legend’s nine chart-topping hits. “I never, ever thought Aerosmith would do my song. They just don’t do that. I wasn’t in the studio when they were recording so it went from me teaching Steven Tyler the song at the piano to someone sending me the CD and hearing the finished record. I was blown out of my chair; it was so great. I think to this day I’m the only outside songwriter [they’ve worked with].
And while Warren has already received a Grammy, a Primetime Emmy, two Golden Globes, 15 Oscar nominations, and in 2022 became the first-ever songwriter to receive a Governor’s Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, she says the “coolest thing that’s ever happened” is getting two members of the Beatles on her song, “Here’s to the Nights.” As she recalls, “A few years ago Ringo asked me for a song and it was basically, ‘Here’s to the nights we won’t remember with the friends we won’t forget.’ My idea when I gave him the song was, ‘Let’s get your old friends and some new friends on there singing along.’ And my whole intention was to get Paul McCartney. And Paul McCartney was the first person who said yes to Ringo. So I have two f—ing Beatles on my song. And also the other artists on that song — Lenny Kravitz, Dave Grohl, Joe Walsh, Sheryl Crow, Finneas… it’s a Who’s Who.”
Despite such memories, Warren insists, “I’m writing my best songs now. I’m working with so many great artists in all genres, whether its country or Afrobeats, whether its Angélique Kidjo to Kesha, or David Guetta in the dance world with Steve Aoki. I just did a great song with The War and Treaty that I think is going to be their career song. It’s one of those songs when you hear it you stop everything and listen. I just heard a mix and I was in tears. I love to do a song that changes someone’s life, whether it’s a new artist or an established artist.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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Even before the release of Beyoncé’s Billboard 200-topping album Cowboy Carter, Ryan Beatty was having a banner 2024. His name is in the liner notes to Bleachers’ self-titled fourth album as a co-writer, and he’ll open for Noah Kahan this summer and Maggie Rogers in the fall — all in support of his own acclaimed 2023 third album, Calico, which earned praise from Elton John, who hosted Beatty on his Apple Music Radio show Rocket Hour last year, saying his songwriting is “beautiful, intense and meaningful.”
But his contributions to Cowboy Carter have been quietly in the works throughout his wins, extending across the past four years. Beatty, a California native and teen pop prodigy turned tender singer-songwriter, is credited with co-writing four songs on the blockbuster, including standouts “Bodyguard” and “II Hands II Heaven.” A closely guarded secret he has kept since 2020 (Beatty, 28, says he “worked on this pretty much from beginning to end”), his collaboration proved to be an inspirational boost. “It gave me this silent confidence for years,” he says. “I think when you’re patient through the process, you almost feel ready for all the things that happen.”
Below, he explains how he scored such major co-writes and what’s up next for his solo career.
Ryan Beatty
Ashlan Grey
Even though Calico came out a year ago, do the past couple months feel like a milestone for you?
I think when you’re patient through the process, you feel ready for all the things that happen. I don’t mean to sound jaded, because it’s unreal all of the things that I’ve done and am getting to do. When I put my record out, I knew what I made and I knew how special it was to me. I’d hoped that it’d feel just as special to the people listening to it. I also know what I was willing to do and not willing to do. And I’m very adamant about staying authentic in every single decision I make when it comes to my music. And I think because I’ve been so protective of it, it’s been such a nice slow burn that the discovery of the record has been happening so naturally and effortlessly.
I didn’t realize how much this record affected people until I started touring it. Seeing people really show up and really be there with me was really special. It’s nice to know that staying true to yourself pays off, because it’s so easy for you to bite the apple and try things that don’t feel right for you and you think, “Oh, this worked for somebody else so maybe it will work for me.” But I think every artist has that feeling in their gut when they know something is right for them or not, you just have to listen closely.
You were working on Cowboy Carter and Calico simultaneously. What was it like deciding which ideas and lyrics should be for which albums?
There was never a moment where I thought, “Should this go here or there?” Anytime I went in to work on music, it was very intentional to focus on where things existed. At the end of the day, my writing is going to be my writing. But it never blended too much; it was always “I’m making this song for Calico,” or “I’m making this song for Cowboy Carter.” I felt really propelled in my artistry and could feel myself growing as an artist, so working on something of such magnitude at that time also helped hone in on my album. I always call Calico a small record because it’s so close to the chest, and it’s really interesting being in both those worlds. Knowing that [Cowboy Carter] will be heard by every person on Earth, whereas on my record I’m whispering into the mic, I kind of enjoyed that.
How did you keep Cowboy Carter a secret for so long?
It was hard, but I also sort of enjoyed it. There were people in my life who didn’t know until the day it came out. I got phone calls and texts all day, like, “What are you talking about?” The entire time I wanted to honor what was being made, and I really believe in letting the work speak for itself. Not having expectations is the best move.
Your work is usually autobiographical. How does that affect your writing for other artists?
I put my own perspective into these songs. Even on a song like “Just for Fun,” [Beyoncé] sings about Clovis, which is the town I grew up in [in California]. So if you really look into the details of it, you can hear my perspective in there, I think.
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How easy was it deciding whether or not to reflect your own queerness in your work?
It was instant for me. What excites me about making music is talking about my own life. So it wasn’t about should I or shouldn’t I. It was like, this is what excites me, let me be very forward about it.
What did you learn from working with Beyoncé and her team?
She makes things with so much intention, and I’ve always tried to do the same thing. Just seeing the work that goes into it definitely reminded me, “Oh, this is how you make greatness.” That was incredible to be around, and I felt highly respected through the entire process.
What can you share about “BODYGUARD,” which seems to be a fan favorite?
The line “Sometimes I hold you closer just to know you’re real” is one of my favorite lines I wrote for the whole record. Melody and lyric together can make something feel so much more beautiful. I think that melody, the way she sings it, and the line itself feels cute and intimate. I love that part of the song.
What can you reveal about collaborating on the Bleachers album? You are credited as a co-writer on “Call Me After Midnight.”
For that record, it’s one we started working on in 2017. It’s a song I wrote a long time ago. Jack [Antonoff, Bleachers frontman] was working on Kevin Abstract’s record, and I think they pulled that one up to revisit and Jack loved it and asked us if he could rework it and we were like, “Yeah, go for it.” To my surprise, it was on the latest Bleachers record and I’m really happy it went on there. It’s such a fun, beautiful record and I’ve been a fan of Jack’s for a really long time since way before I knew him, so that was a full circle moment at the same time, too.
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It was just announced that you’ll be opening up for Maggie Rogers on her upcoming tour. Do you ever spitball ideas with her?
Maggie is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. She’s just fun to talk to and she wears her heart on her sleeve. I think that I do the same, so I enjoy our conversations.
Are your recent experiences influencing how you’ll write your next album?
Probably, but I wouldn’t know yet. I’d say, I’m grateful to know that the best way for me to write a record is for me to just live life. That sounds really simple, but I try not to go in “record-making mode” and to be honest, I don’t even know what that means. Calico was made over a time where I was like, “Okay, ‘I’m ready to write” and then I’d stop for six weeks. Then I’d go back and work on it a little more. I just want to live a beautiful life, make beautiful things and what comes of it, comes from it. That sounds really simple, but I think if you grip it too hard it ends up being over thought. There has to be ease and intention at the same time.
This story will appear in the April 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Toby Gad’s music career began in the late ‘80s – and like many long careers in music, it has hardly been a straight line rising to the top. If anything, the German songwriter-producer’s journey brings to mind a hiking trail that winds through a mountain range: There have been tough, uphill ascents, breathtaking overlooks, extended rest stops and the occasional detour.
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Over the last couple decades, Gad has written songs for and with stars including Beyoncé (“If I Were a Boy”), Demi Lovato (“Skyscraper”), Madonna (“Living for Love”), Fergie (“Big Girls Don’t Cry”) and John Legend (“All of Me”), with the latter two songs topping the Billboard Hot 100.
Following a whirlwind period of hitmaking, Gad looked at his jam-packed schedule and decided to take a bit of a breather in the mid ‘10s. After becoming what he calls a bit of a “surf bum” in Los Angeles, he found himself back in the industry when Deutschland sucht den Superstar – the German version of the Idol franchise – invited him on the show as a judge.
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The stint reinvigorated Gad, who is currently back in L.A. and prepping for the release of Piano Diaries – Volume One. The album, slated for a mid 2024 release, finds him reimagining some of his signature songs, tapping previous collaborators (Keke Palmer, Victoria Justice) and fresh faces (Camylio) for new, stripped-down versions. Last month, he previewed the project on The Kelly Clarkson Show (a TV program hosted by yet another one of his star collaborators) with an intimate performance of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” featuring Justice on vocals.
Ahead of the release of Piano Diaries – Volume One, Gad spoke to Billboard via Zoom from his poolside L.A. studio, which boasts a grand piano (the one he and Legend wrote “All of Me” on) and a gorgeous view of the city – not bad for someone who spent several years living on instant soup in New York City waiting for that career-making song.
You were recently on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and you’ve known her for years. What’s it been like to watch her become this big daytime TV star in America?
I’m really happy for her. The first time we worked together on the Stronger album — before we even got into studio — she asked if we can go out for dinner. So we met in Silver Lake and had a dinner together. And we were just chatting away for two hours. And she’s such a wonderful, warm-hearted person and wants to know about your family and tells you all about her life and her family. And I think that’s why she has this show — because she loves talking to people. She has a very approachable way. If she talks to you, you instantly feel like, “We could be friends.”
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On her show, you performed a reimagining of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” with Victoria Justice. What was it about Justice that made you reach out to her for this particular song?
She has actually not sang for a long time. She’s put a lot of energies into just acting and then recently she began releasing some music again. There’s one song, “Only A Stranger,” that she released which is very soft. And when I heard that I just was really curious to see what she would sound like on “Big Girls Don’t Cry” with a soft rendition, because the [original] song is Fergie’s belting voice. It worked out and she was totally happy that I called her. We were having so much fun. If you look into her TikTok, there’s dozens of little video clips of us climbing mountains or going through L.A., surfing together. Anything we can connect to the song, it’s so much fun. We actually were just in Baja for three days writing a few more songs.
So there’s more coming with her?
That won’t be Piano Diaries, but for her, we just wrote some stuff for her. And it was a lot of fun.
You mentioned TikTok — what do you think of it? It’s become such a big part of the music industry.
Short answer, I think it’s an amazing opportunity in general – TikTok, Instagram, being able for artists to have a direct conduit to their fans and directly let people hear what they’re doing. This is such a blessing. Most of my career was the old days where you would depend on record labels. Between you and the listener, there was always label. Now any artist anyone can just release something and publish it. And that’s incredible. I love that. And just recently, we restarted my Kite Records record label, and we’re releasing Piano Diaries on that via AWAL and Orchard. And it’s such an incredible opportunity. I love it.
You also have “Little Do You Know” with Keke Palmer and Aloe Blacc. You worked with Keke, what, 15 years ago?
When she came from Akeelah and the Bee and had Barbershop with Queen Latifah, then she got a record deal with Atlantic Records. We wrote a few songs – I think I had three songs on that Atlantic Records record — and she must have been 12 or 13 years old. I have some videos from back then — she always wanted to do the trust fall with me. She was such a powerful, driven kid back then already. I called her up and she was like, “Yes! Let’s do it.” Aloe is the sweetest, too, they have amazing chemistry.
So with Keke, have you kept in touch all these years?
I reached out to her last year — I was a judge on German Idol, and we filmed a documentary about my life for the German network. I asked her to be part of that and she was happy to come over and give some interviews. And that was nice. I actually reached out to a bunch of people: John Legend, Leona [Lewis], Natasha [Bedingfield], Colbie Caillat, everyone did little interviews about the relationships we’ve had work-wise and it made it onto this one-hour documentary that aired in Germany. “Bottoms Up” is one of the songs we had back then and also True Jackson, VP, her TV show, we did the title song. So every now and then our lives intersect.
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You also have a new version of “Skyscraper” that you did with Camylio. He has such an amazing voice, how did he come across your radar?
I heard of Camylio a while ago and that was actually a little trickier because he’s signed to Universal/Republic so we had to convince his label. I’ve been a fan of his voice for a while, we’ve written together every now and then. I just wanted to hear it with a male voice — with a very strong male voice — and I think he did a beautiful job on it. We haven’t locked in the next single yet, but we have “All of Me,” which is going to be Colbie Caillat, and for “If I Were a Boy” or “Untouched,” but I’m not sure who it’s going to be. Who would you want to hear on these songs?
God, great question, putting me on the spot. Maybe SZA on “If I Were a Boy”? I don’t know. I did want to ask about that song. You co-wrote it with BC Jean, but how did you go about putting yourself in the mindset to write from a female perspective or to help enable that perspective?
With BC Jean, I had done 10 songs with her back then, we found each other on MySpace. This was one time where we just did a little pizza run from the studio in New York — I had a studio on 46th between 5th and 6th — and we were walking down the street and she was ranting about a boyfriend and said, “Well, if I were a boy, I would kick his ass.” Or something like that. And I was like, “Wait a minute, did you just say, ‘if I were a boy?’ That’s a great line. Let’s go back to the studio and write more of what you would do if you were a boy.” I got the guitar out and we were just line-by-line thinking all the all the things she would do different if she were a boy.
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What made you want to do this album in the first place, to revisit these songs in a stripped-down context. What inspired that idea?
Well, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” I wrote 20 years ago with Fergie. “All of Me” now has its 10th anniversary. When I hear them on the radio I feel like I want to record them how I hear them today. And I also wanted to make a collection with the songs that have defined my career. Also, when I write songs, I usually write on the piano here. This is the piano I like to write on – we wrote “All of Me” on this piano. Quite often, the first version of a song is piano-vocal, and I wanted to let people hear that. It has an intimacy to it. I felt it would be great to have an album where those songs are stripped down and you dig in a little deeper into the lyric. But then also remixes where it can go crazy with different styles.
So “All of Me” was written on that piano. Was it in the exact room you’re in right now?
Yeah, right in here. John was so in love with Chrissy [Teigen] and said he wanted to write a song for her. And he already had the words, “all of me loves all of you,” and he had the first chord. And then from there we just built it together. I’m still very much in love with my wife, and I was thinking, “What I would want to sing to her?” And we were trading places at the piano and an hour and a half later, it was done.
Amazing. That’s just two people in a room. I’ve read an interview with you where you opine that having a big team of songwriters can spoil a song. Why is that, for you?
Personally, to me, I think authenticity is very important. If it comes straight from a journal, basically, the song feels like it’s out of the moment and an urgent, honest emotion put into music. Then it resonates the most with me. And I think if you have many people in the room, everyone contributes their idea from a different angle, and it has a danger of possibly becoming a more generic song versus something that just happens to be really weird and original. “All of Me” isn’t weird but it touches on something in a very authentic way. It’s a love song that feels like, “Wow, he’s really in love at that moment.” I love that about songs if they feel personal.
I also want to ask about Madonna, because you worked on Rebel Heart. I gather there were some sessions where you were waiting around but she didn’t show up?
Waiting around? That was Beyoncé. That was the days with Beyoncé and Jay-Z where I was on hold for a week, and she didn’t show up the first three days. With Madonna, we had a writing camp from Interscope and she didn’t come to the writing camp. But then Interscope convinced me to do another writing camp in New York that time it was in a studio next to Alicia Keys’ studio. And they actually did show up the first day. It was very intimidating at first, but then we kind of bonded and we ended up doing five weeks together.
How was it songwriting with her?
You know, at first it was Mozella and me and S1, he’s a beatmaker from Dallas. The three of us prepared ideas, we came in a little earlier in the studio, and then when she arrived, we showed her what we had just prepared. And fortunately, she liked the ideas, and then she sat down with us. And those were just rough ideas, like a beginning of a chorus or a little hook or something. Then we worked on it together and finished it together. I recorded her and we got a routine going. And later on, she was in the studio with Diplo, and his career was exploding so he had very little attention for Madonna and Madonna was pissed. She said, “Let’s get Toby back in because he’s the finisher.”
“Living for Love,” which you worked on, is like the best song on the album.
Thank you so much. I’m debating if I should put that on the Piano Diaries album. I saw the tour right after we wrote those songs it was absolutely amazing to see how quickly she transformed those songs into something that could be performed on stage with all her acrobatics. It was such a beautiful payoff to the writing sessions, to see those songs visualized. She’s such a star on stage. It’s unbelievable.
I also wanted to ask about the new Milli Vanilli documentary. At the start of your career, you had some writing credits on their debut album. When did you realize there was some fakery going on?
We’ve never met the guys. Frank Farian took us to the studio and we recorded the three songs. And then like a week or two after that album was finished and on the charts, it was such a quick turnaround. We were pretty much watching it from the outside. We heard the rumors that they didn’t sing, but it only became really clear after the tape started jamming, and then when they had to return the Grammy. The movie is well done. It’s super entertaining. And it’s so funny, because while these things unfolded, I was in the studio with Frank but working on our album, my brother and me we were doing an album called Q during that time. And I mean, Frank had a heart attack during that time — it really got to him and it was a sh-tstorm in the studio while they were touring in America doing all these big stadium tours. They came back and said, “We must sing on the [second album],” and Frank was like, “No, the album is finished. I’m not touching it anymore. It’s coming out.”
So he must have been panicking. Was he more anxious or angry?
All of that, all of the above. It was not easy for him. I mean, it was his biggest dream to make his mark in America. So in a way that was his, “Wow, finally.” He’s a massive producer in Germany with Boney M., but I don’t think America knows Boney M.
They had a couple hits in America, but never as big as the Milli Vanilli songs.
To have something resonate in America was for him a lifelong dream, and then it going so wrong was a disaster for Frank.
Were you ever worried about how it would affect your career?
No, because people loved the music. And it was just the fact that the performers didn’t really sing. They performed, they were dancing, and at the time, it was a bit more of a grey zone. A lot of singers would have backing tracks when they performed live and sing a few words, but the fact that they didn’t sing at all, that was hard.
You’re working on Piano Diaries now, and I gather it’s not finished. Is there anyone who you haven’t worked with who you would really like to, either on this project or in the future?
I would love to work with P!nk. I think it’s about time that we write a song. Somehow it’s never happened but I think it should.
Anything else you want to add about this project?
It’s a really exciting inflection point in my career. I came to America in 2000 with a lot of dreams and very little money. The first four or six years in New York were really, really hard. There were times when I was living on a bagel and an instant soup but I just couldn’t imagine going back to Germany — I had to write the song that would put me on the map. And okay, if we go from 2005-2006 – when “Big Girls Don’t Cry” was on the map – to 2015, which was kind of the culmination of all this amazing, incredible work with all these big stars. I was the No. 3 songwriter on Billboard [in 2014], which was incredible. And then I kind of dreamt of not working anymore. My calendar was two to three sessions every day for the next several months, and I thought, “When is this going to end?” [laughs] I pulled the plug and actually learned to surf, traveled, did some home renovations, started working on a movie I’m still working on, and then became a judge on German Idol. And that was such a great experience — being in front of the camera and being celebrated for being a songwriter — that I felt I needed to write songs again. From that, I was pushing hard again. The last two years, I was working really hard on getting good songs again, and with Piano Diaries I’m for the first time looking back on this incredible journey.
“Shellback was bored,” ILYA says, reflecting on how he and the Swedish hit-maker ended up working together for the first time — ultimately changing the course of his career. Having grown up in what he calls “the hood of Sweden,” ILYA’s discovery of music production was a bit of a surprise — quite literally, as he found a CD of the music-making program Dance eJay in a cereal box. From there, he says, he “fell in love with creating.”
By his late teens, in 2005, ILYA signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music and remembers “grinding, grinding, grinding… with not a lot happening.” Several years later, he met Shellback (Britney Spears, P!nk, Taylor Swift), who eventually asked ILYA what he was working on, and later suggested to his close collaborator Max Martin that they should all team up. “Coming up to that point, I had a lot of almosts,” recalls ILYA, now 37. “I had songs with One Direction that just fell off and didn’t make the albums. All those years were so important to learn how to act in the room, how to deal with people’s emotions and all these things leading up to when I got the shot from Shellback and Max.”
Almost immediately, ILYA scored a major win as a co-producer and co-writer on Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea’s 2014 smash, “Problem,” which hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Every time I make music today, I try to channel the energy I had when we did ‘Problem,’ ” says ILYA, who has continued his relationship with Grande for a decade, leading into her current era. “Making that beat, it was like, ‘I’m just going to do me.’ And when that success finally happened… It was unbelievable.”
Ariana Grande, “Yes, And?”
“This whole song was her idea — she had a vision. I remember we were going through chords and she was like, ‘It needs to be more confident. It has to be more sassy.’ When Ari’s describing an emotion she wants to have, I instantly go, ‘What sounds can make that emotion come to life?’ And to me, the 909 drums are what that vibe is. In the bridge there are all these funny Mellotron sounds that are really ’60s, Beatles-esque, and a flute that Max played that I laugh at every time I hear it. Once we finished it, that’s when I fell in love with it.”
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Tate McRae, “Guilty Conscience”
“The first time I worked with [Tate] she seemed very unsure of everything. There was one song we did so many versions of because she couldn’t decide which one was the best. But I think growing up, she feels much more confident in what she likes, which helps me a lot. I’ve never finished a song as fast as this one… it was all her initiative. We wrote it and then had to turn it in that week or the week after. Everything [came] from whatever happened that day.”
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Conan Gray, “Never Ending Song”
“Conan started working with Max for a few days and they cracked this sonic direction, but not the details. And then Max came to me and was like, ‘Conan would love to work with you for this next round.’ Once the song was done, [Max and I] spent a lot of time running stuff through analog gear. Sometimes it’s cool if a song sounds like it’s made quickly — but the details and tasteful stuff that you can get from analog gear, you can’t beat that.”
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This story will appear in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Olivia Rodrigo can vividly remember the first album she bought with her own money and the huge impact it had on her. “I remember getting my first phone — I was probably 12 or 13 — and the first thing I did was download Lorde Pure Heroine,” the 20-year-old “Vampire” singer said of the “Solar […]
Apple Music is launching the new series Lost & Found to spotlight country songwriters and a handful of never-before-released songs. The series features six demos (the “Lost” part) in addition to versions of these songs recorded by established and rising country artists (the “Found” part).
“Need a Favor” and “Son of a Sinner” hitmaker Jelly Roll is the first artist taking part in the program with his version of “Dragging These Roots,” a song written by songwriters Ben Hayslip, Josh Thompson and Jesse Frasure that Apple Music’s team first heard in 2019.
“When Apple Music shared the concept with me, I immediately called Frasure on FaceTime from their listening room to let him know I was definitely cutting the song,” Jelly Roll told Apple Music. “I’m so grateful to Apple Music for shining a light on all these creators and their great artistry.”
“I was so excited to hear this lost song got found by Jelly Roll,” Frasure told Apple Music. “It’s one of my favorites that I’ve co-written, and I was hoping it would eventually get to see the light of day. Having one of my favorite artists and friends, Jelly Roll, be the one to cut it was icing on the cake. We had a great time going into the studio on this one, he’s a truly soulful singer behind the scenes, and he put so much heart into it. I can’t wait!”
Additionally, Apple Music is launching Lost & Found Radio, a monthly companion radio show hosted by singer/songwriter Lori McKenna, who is known for penning hits including Tim McGraw’s “Humble and Kind” and Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush,” and who just released her latest album, 1988. Each of the six Lost & Found Radio episodes will include in-depth background on each song and deep dives into the creative process with each song’s original songwriter(s), studio musicians, producers and the artists recording the songs.
The Lost & Found program will be highlighted Tuesday (July 25) with a live radio episode, beginning at 2 p.m. CT, co-hosted by Apple Music Country host Kelleigh Bannen and featuring songwriters whose works are being featured as part of Lost & Found. A Lost & Found Live Broadcast Special will air Tuesday (July 25) at noon CT.
Lost & Found will also have its own dedicated space on Apple Music where listeners can find playlists for the lost demos, the newfound singles, the Lost & Found Radio show episodes, and playlists from more participating songwriters.
“I’m so thrilled to be a part of this initiative and host the companion radio show on Apple Music Country,” McKenna said in a statement. “Every songwriter has a catalog full of lost songs. It’s exciting that Apple is bringing these almost hits to life and giving some space to these writers, and the stories behind these songs.”
“At Apple Music, we are passionate about celebrating and championing artists and creators,” said Kelleigh Bannen, Apple Music Country’s host. “From advocating for the songwriters, to highlighting the enormous wealth of untapped music, Lost & Found is emblematic of what we do every day, not just here in Nashville, but worldwide. We’re so excited to continue marching towards that mission and look forward to inviting incredible artists to partner with us in unique ways like this.”