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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.
Diaa El All, CEO/founder of generative artificial intelligence music company Soundful, remembers when the first artists were signed to major label deals based on songs using type beats — cheap, licensable beats available online that are labeled based on the artists the beat emulates (i.e. Drake Type Beat, XXXTentacion Type Beat). He also remembers the legal troubles that followed. “Those type beats are licensed to sometimes thousands of people at a time,” he explains. “If it becomes a hit for one artist, then that artist ends up with major problems to unravel.”
Perhaps the most famous example of this is Lil Nas X and his breakthrough smash “Old Town Road,” which was written over a $30 Future type beat that was also licensed by other DIY talents. After the song went viral in early 2019, the then-unknown rapper and meme maker quickly inked a deal with Columbia Records, but beneath the song’s mammoth success lay a tangle of legal issues to sort through. For one thing, the song’s type beat included an unauthorized sample of Nine Inch Nails’ “34 Ghosts IV,” which was not disclosed to Lil Nas X when he purchased it.
El All’s solution to these issues may seem counter-intuitive, but he posits that his AI models could provide an ethical alternative to the copyright nightmares of the type beat market.
Starting Wednesday (Nov. 8), Soundful is launching Soundful Collabs, which is partnering with artists, songwriters and producers in various genres — including Kaskade, Starrah, 3LAU, DJ White Shadow, Autograf and CB Mix — to train personalized AI generators that create beats akin to their specific production and writing styles. To create a realistic model, the artists, songwriters and producers provide Soundful with dozens of their favorite one-shot recordings of kick drums, snares, guitar licks and synth patches from their personal sonic libraries, as well as information about how they typically construct chord progressions and song structures.
The result is individualized AI models that can generate endless one-of-a-kind tracks that echo a hitmaker’s style while compensating them for the use of their name and sonic identity. For $15, a Soundful subscriber can download up to 10 tracks the generator comes up with. This includes stems so the user can add or subtract elements of the track to suit their tastes after exporting it to a digital audio workstation (DAW) of their choice. The hitmaker receives 80% of the monies earned from the collaboration while Soundful retains 20% — a split El All says was inspired by “flipping” major record labels’ common 80/20 split in favor of the artist.
The Soundful leader, who has a background as a classical pianist and sound engineer, sees this as a novel form of musical “merchandise” that offers talent an additional revenue stream and a chance at fostering further fan engagement and user-generated content (UGC). “We don’t use any loops, we don’t use any previous tracks as references,” El All says. As a result, he argues the product’s profits belong only to the talent, not their record label or publishers, given that it does not use any of their copyrights. Still, he says he’s met with “a lot of publishers” and some labels about the new product. (El All admits that an artist in a 360 deal — a contract which grants labels a cut of money from touring, merchandise and other forms of non-recorded music income — may have to share proceeds with their label.)
According to Kaskade, who has been a fan of Soundful’s since he tested the original beta product earlier this year, the process of training his model felt like “Splice on crack — this is the next evolution of the Splice sample packs,” where producers offer fans the opportunity to purchase a pack of their favorite loops and samples for a set price, he explains. “[With sample packs] you got access to the sounds, but now, you get an AI generator to help you put it all together.”
The new Soundful product is illustrative of a larger trend in AI towards personalized models. On Monday, OpenAI, the leading AI company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, announced that it was launching “GPTs” – a new service that allows small businesses and individuals to build customized versions of ChatGPT attuned to their personal needs and interests.
This trend is also present in music AI, with many companies offering personalized models and collaborations with talent. This is especially popular on the voice synthesis side of the nascent industry. So far, start-ups like Kits AI, Voice-Swap, Hooky, CreateSafe and more are working with artists to feed recordings of their voices into AI models to create realistic clones of their voices for fans or the artists themselves to use — Grimes’ model being the most notable to date. Though much more ethically questionable, the popularity of Ghostwriter’s “Heart On My Sleeve” — which employed a voice model to emulate Drake and The Weeknd and which was not authorized by the artists — also proved the appetite for personalized music models.
Notably, Soundful’s product has the potential to be a producer and songwriter-friendly counterpart to voice models, which present possible monetary benefits (and threats) to recording artists and singers but do not pertain to the craftspeople behind the hits, who generally enjoy fewer financial opportunities than the artists they work with. As Starrah — who has written “Havana” by Camila Cabello, “Pick Up The Phone” by Young Thug and Travis Scott and “Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 — explains, Soundful Collabs are “an opportunity for songwriters and producers to expand what they are doing in so many ways.”
El All says keeping the needs of the producer and songwriter communities in mind was paramount in the creation of this product. For the first time, he reveals that longtime industry executive, producer manager and Hallwood Media founder Neil Jacobson is on Soundful’s founding team and board. El All says Jacobson’s expertise proved instrumental in steering the Soundful Collabs project in a direction that El All feels could “change the industry for the better.” “I think what Soundful provides here is similar to what I do in my own business,” says Jacobson. “I supply music to people who need it — with Soundful, a fan of one of these artists who wants to make music but doesn’t quite know how to work a digital audio workstation can get the boost they need to start creating.”
El All says the new product will extend beyond personalization for current songwriters, producers and artists. The Soundful team is also in talks with catalog owners and estates and working with a number of top brands in the culinary, consumer goods, hospitality, children’s entertainment and energy industries to train personalized models to create sonic “brand templates” and “generative catalogs” to be used in social media content. “This will help them create a very clear signature identification via sound,” says El All.
When asked if this business-to-business application takes away opportunities for synch licensing from composers, El All counters that some of these companies were using royalty free libraries prior to meeting with Soundful. “We’re actually creating new opportunities for musicians because we are consistently hiring those specializing in synch and sound designers to continue to evolve the brand’s sound,” he says.
In the future, Soundful will drop more artist templates every four to six weeks, and its Collabs will expand into genres like Latin, lo-fi, rock, pop and more. “Though this sounds good out of the box … what will make the music a hit is when a person downloads these stems and adds their own human imperfections and style to it,” says El All. “That’s what we are looking to encourage. It’s a jumping off point.”
A few days after Madonna’s The Celebration Tour kicked off at London’s O2 Arena to a sold-out crowd and rave reviews, the tour’s music producer Stuart Price – previously a part of the pop icon’s orbit as the co-producer on her high-BPM classic Confessions on a Dance Floor – welcomed Billboard into his London studio.
The English producer/DJ’s flat is in the thick of the fashionable Notting Hill district — close enough to the action that during the annual Notting Hill Carnival, Price says “the alarms in the studio always go off because there’s all these bass systems pummeling through the walls.”
The second-floor recording studio is a clean, neatly arranged space dotted with guitars, comfortable chairs and a cornucopia of electronics, much of it vintage (at least by the ever-shifting standards of technology). As we speak, Price is seated next to the wood-paneled board he used to mix Confessions; not far from it casually rests the $250 microphone that Madonna used to record a number of songs for that 2005 LP.
With no live band backing Madonna’s 78-date trek – her original recordings take center stage on this tour — Price’s role as music producer has afforded him more opportunities for input and innovation than someone in the same role might have on another pop star’s tour. To that end, The Celebration Tour includes sonic Easter eggs and clever references for the faithful to parse as they’re engulfed in an aural and sensory journey through the life and art of Madonna.
For as much time and thought as Price has put into the Celebration Tour, he’s certain it pales in comparison to what the Queen of Pop has invested in it. “As much as Madonna demands of anyone working with her, she demands that much of herself as well,” Price tells Billboard. “It’s always in the pursuit of, ‘How can we improve this? How can we aid the arc of the show?’ It’s nice to have a show you can unpack whether through memories or during a second visit. It’s a show that can keep giving.”
Of a tour that covers four decades of classics – and is notably her first tour not in support of a new album – Price opines that, “It’s impossible to look back without looking forward.” Referring to the airborne platform that permits Madonna to float above the crowd during “Live to Tell” and “Ray of Light,” he explains, “That’s why there’s a window frame in the show. That window frame is about reflecting backwards and reflecting forward as well.”
From providing glimpses into his creative process with Madonna to revealing certain audio Easter eggs that pop up during the show to potential setlist changes, here’s what Stuart Price told Billboard about working on Madonna’s The Celebration Tour.
I’m going to start with a granular question. In the Celebration Tour, “Like a Prayer” is melded with bits of Sam Smith & Kim Petras’ “Unholy” and her own “Act of Contrition,” which features electric guitar from Prince.
Yes, correct.
The medley is inspired. Was everything from “Contrition” that appears in the tour from the album? There were some parts of the Prince solo where I was listening and thinking, “I don’t quite remember this bit.”
Part of the joy of working on this tour specifically was how we were going to approach featuring original recordings. It’s a tour which is essentially biopic in style, documentary in style. When you see a great documentary you get archival footage, a real taste of stuff that happened at the time. Madonna’s archive of multi-track recordings covers a vast era: multi-track two-inch tapes all the way through DAWs today. When you work in a DAW today, you delete what you don’t use, and the file is gone. But the old tape multi-tracks, everything was recorded and what was muted was done at the time of the mix. So if you now listen to those recordings 25 years later and have the channels open, you hear all this stuff that was not present in the final recording but is available. I used everything I could of the guitar because it’s incredible. For a tour that is connecting memories of relationships, partnerships and musical experiences, using original stuff is so important. If you’re able to find stuff in that original recoding that no one has ever heard, you’re actually getting to peek behind the curtain.
Was there anything else like that?
There’s another moment like that at the beginning of “Erotica.” We were searching for atmosphere for the intro — “Erotica” begins with this big, booming bass line and we needed to fill some time. In the original multi-track to “Justify My Love,” there’s this great moment about 30 seconds before the song begins. Madonna gets into the vocal booth and she’s waiting to record and she’s getting into the mood of the song and Lenny Kravitz appears. He says something very innocent like, “We’re gonna put some reverb on your voice, we’re gonna f–k with you a bit.” And she says, “That’s okay, you can f–ck with me.” It’s such a great soundbite. That’s a great example of this thing that’s from the time but has never appeared.
Stuart Price
Neil Tennant
The tour features music from Prince and a bit of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” I’m guessing the estates gave their blessing.
I approached everything on a musical level for the tour, I don’t know relationships or how they do that.
“Billie Jean” appears in “vs” form alongside “Like a Virgin.” The “Virgin” vocal struck me as slightly different from the original.
“Like a Virgin,” the vocal from that is the original recording. There’s a few things happen in the show. There are segues or mashups of songs where you just need to make it work. So that might involve transposition or time correction or stretching or shortening or whatever it is. When you’re trying to pursue storytelling ideas through music, you should never let a technical consideration get in the way. If you do that, you’re diminishing the strength of the idea. We may change the key of the song because it’s better for Madonna to sing — the A note is to serve the arc of the show. There’s probably elements of time crunching that happens.
Opening the show with “Nothing Really Matters” was totally unexpected, and the setlist includes a few songs she hasn’t done in decades. Was the setlist locked by the time you got involved?
I first talked to Madonna about this tour in February of this year. When we first spoke at the time, she was already prepared with her full pages of setlists and ideas of exactly what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it. The phone call was actually Madonna directing what the show was going to be. Her preparation is always so considered. Much is always made of Madonna’s collaborators, but there’s no two ways about it: She’s considered everything before she even gets into the room with a collaborator. And it’s fantastic to work with someone with such strong direction. So to answer your question, the setlist was almost fully realized.
On opening night, she was very candid about the bacterial infection that sent her to the hospital and postponed the tour. When she was in the hospital, did you ever wonder if the tour might not happen?
For a tour you’ve been working on for such a long period of time and that’s had so much time invested in it — especially by Madonna — when you take a break for it, the only thing you focus on is “what’s the end result of what happened here?” To me that is someone who looks so strong, so healthy, sings so great and moves so great. Your experience when you see the show is one of wonder. Not just creatively but artistically as well.
Her voice sounded amazing. And she does “Ray of Light,” which is a tough one to sing, and nails it.
In terms of building the show, top of the list is got to be, “Can we make something that is enjoyable to perform? Can we make something you feel confident doing.” The number one reason for doing that is it’s all about the vocals. To give a singer the platform to sing and be themselves is the number one goal. All this stuff is aimed toward, “Does Madonna feel like she can hold the microphone and really go for it and deliver on it?” I love a comment I’ve received from fans after the show. A couple fans go, “Is that all tape vocal?” To me, that is the biggest compliment because it’s all live vocal. There’s a couple of spoken word sections in the show where we just use track. But it’s all live vocals; there’s backing singers — there always has been — but it’s all live vocals. I hope that you hear the humanness of the vocal coming across as well.
Well, you certainly knew it was live on opening night when there were sound issues on “Burning Up” — she even joked about it.
One thing I marvel at – I go to a lot of DJ shows, and what’s the biggest cheer of the night? Is it the beginning of the show, the end of the show, or when the DJ accidentally knocks a fader or button and the whole thing stops, the DJ pretends it wasn’t them, points somewhere else and gets this huge reaction from the audience? Because it says, “This is real. It’s fragile.” After eight months of rehearsal, the factor that changes is the audience. There’s a heat, a bunch of extra noise, and on that night, there was a technical hitch with the computer system on “Burning Up.” Whilst anyone responsible for the show is concerned, there’s this other connection going on between Madonna and the audience, which is completely improvised, off the cuff and more importantly a real human connection. It’s a unique human thing that happened for the night.
And it gave the audience a few minutes with her, totally unscripted, which was great. When you’re watching the show now, are you still making tweaks and fixes?
Yeah. The day you lose desire to keep improving is the day you should step aside. If you’re invested in something and care about it, it’s impossible to be an artist and not constantly be considering how you can improve or evolve over the course of a tour.
There are a lot of clever audio moments in the show. I love when the camera is rotating around Bob the Drag Queen and we hear the “Lucky Star” synth roll as it moves. Are there any deep cuts most people won’t notice?
Sure. Actually, prior to that movement, the startup noise of the show when Bob the Drag Queen comes on and says, “it’s show time,” there’s this sort of slow building motorized arpeggio sound. And it’s building momentum like a clock or disco ball spinning faster. (It’s) from the song “Lucky Star” — there’s that iconic arpeggiated sound. I took that and we just stretched it out as long as we could. And then we stretched it a little bit further until we could break it down into individual component noises. So that speed-up is coming from the original “Lucky Star” arpeggio deconstructed and gradually sped up until it gets to original speed.
That’s cool.
There’s a little moment right before “Live to Tell” which is a very emotional part of the show, where there’s a reference to “In This Life.” When you look at her volume of work, there’s gotta be more than 70 hit songs. So how do you approach 70 hit songs in a two-hour show? The answer is by creating a continuum of references, of lyrics, of melodies of as many songs as possible, whether it’s a bridge or an overlay. (You hear) “In This Life” between the end of “Holiday,” which is about the death of people in that era, and using it as a transition into “Live to Tell.” And using a spot of “Angel” as a transition from “Billie Jean” into “Bitch I’m Madonna.” That’s how you collect all these songs.
When she called you up, was the decision to forgo a band already made?
Madonna, right from the start, decided she wanted to present the show in a different way. And she wanted to do it in ways that were noteworthy. With this tour, I thought it was fascinating that she’d decided, “I want to come out, be me, sing the songs and perform them front and center.” Whilst I love having a band on stage, I thought it was an interesting idea she wanted to do for this. Within that discussion came conceptually how do we create a set of performers from original recordings. The answer was, we’ll feature the recordings: we’ll deconstruct them, manipulate them, reinvent, juggle and use parts that haven’t been heard before.
When you get to a gallery or a museum and see a sculpture, you don’t just experience it in fixed, static two dimensions; you get to walk around a sculpture and study it from different angles. Wouldn’t it be exciting if we could do that with music — study it from different dimensions? Those are different ways to peer inside.
And it’s pretty amazing watching her kids perform during the show. Mercy James’ piano playing was so impressive.
All Madonna’s children are gifted individuals and they’re musically gifted. It’s impressive getting to witness contributions that large in a stage show. Mercy’s piano playing is just stunning. David as an individual – as a singer, as a guitar player – you get a sense of his wonderful personality, it’s so infectious. Estere and Stella – same thing.
Is it possible you and Madonna could be working on new music?
You measure a working relationship not by the gaps between but by how easily you pick up again from when you left off. As soon as we started to work together on this tour, the shorthand was there. We were able to create productively. The key component of working together is “do you understand each other?” And musically, are you able to challenge as well? That’s how you get the 1 + 1 = 3 outcome. So, I’ve really enjoyed working together again. [laughs]
Can we expect setlist changes or surprises as the tour rolls on?
I think… Madonna’s reputation is for always having a highly rehearsed, highly choreographed show and she provides the element of dynamicism with her interactions. But at the same time, her mind keeps evolving and reaching further. And it’s common on her tours to start to perform to audiences, feel what works and where there’s an opening to do something new. It would be foolish to not take opportunities to act on inspiration. It’s a long tour. Right now, what audiences are seeing is the pure form rehearsal version of the show, and as it goes on, there will be an evolution.
London’s O2 Arena has an 11 p.m. curfew, and on opening night she went a bit over. What makes it difficult to start on time and hit that curfew mark? What’s happening in those 15 minutes before it starts?
Yeah. Well, what goes on is preparation, preparation, preparation. Madonna is committed to always showing up on stage in a zone of confidence and inspiration. Every day before the show there’s soundcheck, there is rehearsal in the soundcheck. I think being so uncompromising about making sure the show gets delivered doesn’t have anything that could be overlooked – it takes a certain amount of time. It’s interesting, in my experience – I worked with Madonna [on tours] in 2001, 2004 and 2006 – the ticket always said 8:30 and she was always on by 9. And on this tour, the ticket said 8:30, and she’s been on by 9. No one is delaying for delaying’s sake.
What’s your favorite moment in the tour?
Emotionally, the strongest moment in the show is “Live to Tell.” It’s powerful. It’s a reminder that Madonna has soundtracked a lot of our cultural history. It’s so striking because she’s addressing people that have been lost, people that were friends, people that were muses and collaborators. You see them on the screen, and they’re gone, and Madonna is still here, having been with those people, and now singing to them. It’s hard not to feel something on a human level.
Also, when the opening happens, it’s so powerful. Nothing compares to the moment when someone comes out in such strong voice, looking so powerful. It really hits you. That’s what the audience will connect to – and in turn what Madonna will connect to from the crowd. That relationship is what it’s all about.
I also love “Nothing Really Matters” as the show opener because of the line, “Everything I give you / all comes back to me.” That seems sort of like a theme of the overall show.
The Easter egg there is the end of the song. What she did is repeat the lines “in your arms, in your arms.” She says it once on the album but four times live, because that’s the message.
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