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2008 Grammy Awards
Member Since: 4/6/2007
Posts: 15,583
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So what time does this start? 
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Member Since: 5/30/2007
Posts: 2,388
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I hope his predictions come true. I really want Beyonce and Kanye to walk out with those grammys in hand!
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Member Since: 5/30/2007
Posts: 2,388
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I know other people are trying to start "official" threads, but this already has 8 pages of discussion and it was around longer...so bump..hahaha
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Member Since: 5/30/2007
Posts: 2,388
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Feb 4 2008 8:00 AM EST
Amy Winehouse's 'Rehab,' 'The Theme Song Of Modern-Day Celebrity Trash Culture': Behind The GrammysViews 1,052
A casual conversation gave rise to one of 2007's biggest hits, producer Mark Ronson recalls.
By Chris Harris
There's no question that 2007 was filled with dramatic highs and lows for Amy Winehouse.
And there's no question that, in addition to the song's undeniable musical appeal, her hit "Rehab" — which is one of the five nominees for the Record of the Year Grammy Award — was driven by its relevance to the singer's real-life troubles: Winehouse herself is in a rehab facility in England at press time, following the widespread circulation of an online video in which the singer is seen smoking from what appears to be a crack pipe. The singer's scheduled appearance at the awards on Sunday — she's nominated for six Grammys, also including Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist — remains in question.
Yet despite its resonance to both Winehouse's life and today's culture, the song was born from a casual comment and was written in a matter of hours.
Mark Ronson, who produced "Rehab" for Winehouse's Back to Black LP, recently recalled working on the track, and said the tune started off as a complaint, spawned by a conversation during a break from recording sessions.
The two were working at his studio and decided to take a quick stroll around the neighborhood, during which Winehouse started telling Ronson about some of her personal problems.
"Amy came into my studio in New York one day, and we really hit it off and got some ideas going pretty quick, so she stayed in New York for two weeks to work," he recalled. "Most of the time, she was coming in and writing songs on the guitar, and we decided we wanted to go for this '60s soul/girl-group sound that we both loved, and we started making her songs fit with that.
"We were walking down the street," he continued, "and she's telling me a story about her family or something coming over to [her home], to kind of talk some sense into her. And she was like, 'They tried to make me go to rehab, and I told them no, no, no,' and she put her hand up.
"I guess, as a friend, I should have been like, 'Oh my God, that must have been hard for you.' But as a producer, I was just like, 'That sounds hooky — you should go back to the studio and we should turn that into a song.'"
As soon as they were back in the studio, Ronson said Winehouse came up with the hook, "but it started out as a slow blues shuffle — it was like a 12-bar blues progression, and I said, 'I think it would be fun for the verse to put in those like Beatles-esque E-minor, A-minor chords, which would give it that jangly feeling. So she did."
Winehouse, Ronson said, wasn't accustomed to writing songs in this manner, as most of what she did was based around jazz chords. "She wrote it so quick, in like three hours, and we worked on it a bit," Ronson said.
Not long after, Winehouse and Ronson called on the Dap Kings, the Brooklyn, New York-based band whose vintage-R&B-worshipping sound gives the record its '60s soul flavor.
"Amy and I were in my studio, and I'm playing all the instruments and using every digital trick in the book to make the song sound old, and I remembered hearing the Dap Kings record the day before," the producer recalled. "I played it for Amy and said, 'We should just get these guys to play the sh--, it'll be great.' She said, 'Sounds good to me,' and we went in and did it with them." The group ended up performing on all six Ronson-produced songs on the album.
Winehouse and Ronson dug the song, but the reaction from the singer's British label took the producer by surprise. "I played it for her A&R guy a week later, and he came to New York to check up on us — to see how much of his money we were wasting," he recalled with a laugh. "And I'll tell you, English A&R guys are a bit more excitable than American A&R guys. We played the record for him, and in the first 15 seconds, he was like, 'Rewind that! Rewind that! That sh--'s amazing!' I didn't think it was a bad song and I enjoyed what we were working on — but I'd never made a hit record before, so I didn't know that was something I might actually be capable of."
Ronson figured the song's old-school sound automatically ruled out its commercial possibilities in the U.S. "I mean, it just doesn't sound like anything else out there, and I couldn't imagine why that it would be a hit on the radio," he said, adding, "I'm not surprised that Amy took off, because I can see it from a completely subjective view. If I had nothing to do with it, and saw Amy sing, I could understand why it would be big in England. I was surprised, but in a proud way, when it started blowing up in England, but when it started to come back here and started to make some noise in America, I was shocked."
Apparently the shock has worn off, since Ronson said he believes the song is a strong contender to win the Record of the Year Grammy, where it's up against Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable," the Foo Fighters' "The Pretender," Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around ... Comes Around." (Look for stories on all of those songs appearing here in MTV News throughout the week.)
"When you look at that list, and think about what songs might be on the radio in 20 years from now, for better or worse, its probably going to be 'Rehab' and 'Umbrella,' " he said. "I think Amy deserves to win, but it's always hard to tell. You can't listen to that song and think anything else but she owns it and no one else could have sung that. It's her voice and her lyrics that make that record. Listening to that song now, you can't imagine anyone else singing it — it's just her song.
"It's basically the theme song of modern-day celebrity trash culture," he reflected. "Amy wasn't trying to be ironic, she just wrote it from a completely personal place. It very much feels like if there ever was a moment for the institution of rehab ... it's definitely been around these past two years, and as much as I think Perez Hilton and those things are complete and utter rubbish, and ruin the classic medium of reporting, I understand the controversy did help this record in some sort of way."
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Member Since: 6/16/2006
Posts: 8,691
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Quote:
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Originally posted by yerboylc3
I know other people are trying to start "official" threads, but this already has 8 pages of discussion and it was around longer...so bump..hahaha
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Damn it yerboylc! 
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Member Since: 3/8/2007
Posts: 3,241
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Amy to rule Grammy's!Hopefully Christina wins something...
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Member Since: 8/14/2007
Posts: 29,341
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Quote:
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Originally posted by emmanuel_punk
Yeah too funny well Britney is eather getting zero noods  and great for Rihanna she deserves it
Too bad that AVRIL LAVIGNE isn't nominated  |
LMAO utter retard, Britney was not eligible because of release dates.
Avril on the other hand got KICKED OUT due to ****** material.
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Member Since: 11/30/2007
Posts: 26,796
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I hope Kanye wins Album Of The Year. His album is fabolous.
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Member Since: 12/23/2006
Posts: 20,355
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if kanye wins AOTY it´s because his 3 albums combined deserves that grammy, not "graduation" alone
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Member Since: 8/14/2007
Posts: 29,341
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Amy Beerhouse will win 
Grammy's always nominate comercial acts just to attract ratings of the loons hoping their fave mainstream artist wins, but they only give the award to real artists [Excluding Aggie and Emmilou Harris] in the end.
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Member Since: 5/30/2007
Posts: 2,388
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Originally posted by rapisalive
Damn it yerboylc! |
Hahaha...all in good fun  
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Member Since: 1/20/2008
Posts: 3,317
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Entertainment Weekly predicted Umbrella for song of the year, and said Irreplaceable would be its competition
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Member Since: 6/16/2006
Posts: 8,691
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Quote:
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Originally posted by yerboylc3
Hahaha...all in good fun |
Yeah it's all good us Kanye fans looking forward for Ye to win Album of the Year!
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Member Since: 12/6/2007
Posts: 8,865
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Reatard  .... Britney getting ZERO noods 4 the date of the album was released....
It will be funny when Britney released her album on april and not get any nood.. like Avril did
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Member Since: 4/6/2007
Posts: 15,583
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Member Since: 5/4/2005
Posts: 21,850
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Rihanna better win!! 
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Member Since: 7/15/2007
Posts: 3,364
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Quote:
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Originally posted by musicb_/
Reatard .... Britney getting ZERO noods 4 the date of the album was released....
It will be funny when Britney released her album on april and not get any nood.. like Avril did |
yeah but gimme more?????
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Member Since: 12/23/2006
Posts: 20,355
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Quote:
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Originally posted by Yahhh!
^What are "noods"?
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i guess 
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Member Since: 12/6/2007
Posts: 8,865
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Quote:
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Originally posted by BACKTOTRIP
yeah but gimme more?????
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REally.... i dont know.... a lot of people said that JIVE doesnt send GM To " get a nomination" and it will.... cuz´ i saw in a site all the songs that were send and could get a nomination... and GM wasnt there....
i think so... but the hater gonna say " cuz is bad "
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Member Since: 5/30/2007
Posts: 2,388
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Feb 5 2008 8:00 AM EST
Beyonce's 'Irreplaceable' Could Have Gone Country: Behind The Grammys
Ne-Yo had Shania Twain or Faith Hill in mind while writing B's biggest hit.
By Gil Kaufman
You've heard this story a million times about some enormous hit song: "It was a last-minute add to the album," "It almost didn't make the cut," "We didn't think it sounded finished," "I wrote it in two minutes on my way to rehearsal," "I almost gave it to another singer."
And sure enough, one of last year's most inescapable songs, and one of the biggest hits in Beyoncé's already smash-heavy career, "Irreplaceable," almost didn't happen. Written by Ne-Yo and super-producers Stargate, the Record of the Year Grammy nominee is the kind of tune that worms its way into your head and keeps you humming the hook, "To the left, to the left."
"Nobody expected it to be the phenomenon it was, it surprised everyone," said Tor Hermansen, one-half of the Norwegian production duo Stargate (his partner is Mikkel Eriksen). "For one, it crosses every boundary; it went from the mix show on Hot 97 in New York to country stations [courtesy of a collaboration with Sugarland at the American Music Awards], and it's a song people from all walks of life can enjoy." Hermansen also said the sound is so different — using a combination of a classic chord progression on an acoustic guitar, a modern-sounding 808 drumbeat and cellos — that it could have doomed the song to not fit any formats. But instead, the unique combination made "Irreplaceable" stand out from everything else on the radio and helped it grab the #1 spot on four different Billboard charts.
"We focused on the sound when we did it, and when we wrote it with Ne-Yo it was done first with a male vocal, and we thought, 'This is more of a female vocal part,' " Hermansen said. "We liked it and so did Ne-Yo, but he said, 'Who will cut this?' "
The tune was not specifically written for Beyoncé — in fact, Ne-Yo wrote it from a male perspective — and Hermansen said that had they been writing for the former Destiny's Child leader, they might not have gone in the direction they did. The sound just wasn't one they associated with her voice. Ne-Yo has said in interviews that he had Faith Hill and Shania Twain in mind when he wrote "Irreplaceable" as a country song, and Hermansen still thinks the tune could easily have been a country radio hit.
But once Beyoncé heard it, she loved it and was sure she could make it her own. "What happens sometimes, is you think about a specific artist and you put them in this box, the song has to be this way or that, and then you're usually confining yourself to the thing they did three years ago," Hermansen said. "But she heard it and did her own vocal arrangements, asked for a few changes to be made and some new drums, and she sang it much higher than the demo."
Once the sessions wrapped for "Irreplaceable," Hermansen said everyone felt they had captured something special and that Beyoncé had done the track justice, but there were still concerns that urban radio might not play the song because it featured acoustic guitars and was too pop. "But then it became the biggest urban record ... ever," he said.
When it was released in late 2006, "Irreplaceable" also helped take some of the sting out of the mixed reaction to the frantic second single from B'Day, "Ring the Alarm." Topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 10 weeks in 2007, "Irreplaceable" became an empowerment anthem thanks to a nighttime-soap-worthy video in which Beyoncé kicks her philandering boyfriend to the curb.
"I love 'Irreplaceable,' " B told MTV News shortly after the song's release. "I think it's important to have those songs. I've had so many people come up to me in tears, saying, 'I experienced my first breakup. If it wasn't for the song, I wouldn't be strong enough to not call. I wouldn't know how much I'm worth.' I'm happy to be a part of that."
Coming off the emotional turmoil she conjured for her role as Deena Jones in the Oscar-nominated "Dreamgirls," Ne-Yo said the song helped Beyoncé work out some issues. "She had some stuff that she wanted to get off her chest, and that's what she did," he said. "An artist's art really only has to make sense to the artist, and if the rest of the world catches on, that's cool too. If they don't, hey, 'This is my art, leave me alone.' "
But it didn't take long for "Irreplaceable" to shoot B'Day back up the charts. The album, which had debuted at #1 with sales of 541,000, had nearly slipped out of the top 20 just six weeks later, but then climbed back into the top 10 three weeks after "Irreplaceable" was released.
To date, the song has sold more than 3 million digital copies and has become the best-charting single of Beyoncé's solo career.
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