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Home , Babyface (musician), Beautiful Liar, Be on You, Espen Lind, Ian Dench, Irreplaceable

FEATURE

When it comes to succeeding in the US R&B scene, nationality is no barrier. Just ask Norwegian Mikkel S. Eriksen and Tor E. Hermansen, members of Stargate.

Text: Paul Tingen

Stargate are a Norwegian songwriting and and have also joined forces with the rapper in a production duo that have been storming publishing company and called StarRoc. charts around the world since 2006, particularly in Stargate’s ascendancy to the top of the American the US where they’ve enjoyed a staggering 21 top 10 music scene in 2006 may sound too meteoric to hits in the last four years. !e duo have been so be true, and it indeed turns out that Eriksen and successful at beating the Americans at their own Hermansen spent many years cutting their teeth in R&B game, in fact, that the Times, not the Norwegian and British music scenes between normally known for going out of its way to cover 1999 and 2004. Stargate – at the time a trio with behind-the-scenes songwriters and producers, wrote third member, Hallgeir Rustan – enjoyed 40 top 10 an extensive interview with them recently, where it hits in the UK alone, before deciding to risk all and was noted that Stargate’s hugely impressive set o$ across the Atlantic. achievements seemed a little incongruous given that its two members, Mikkel S. Eriksen and Tor E. Eriksen and Hermansen set up shop in a room Hermansen, are “wholesome-looking, milk- at studios in the beginning of 2005, complexioned Norwegians… both shiny of scalp and initially met with little success, until a chance and beanstalk thin.” !is isn’t exactly what one has meeting with Ne-Yo in the corridors of the studio in mind when one imagines people working in the later on in the year. changed everything American urban , and the story goes for Stargate and Ne-Yo, and together they wrote a that when , and occasional rapper further three songs for his debut album. In 2006, Ne-Yo "rst met the duo in 2005, he refused to they were responsible for two more international believe they worked in R&B. Luckily Ne-Yo looked monster hits: ’s Unfaithful and Beyoncé’s beyond appearances, and soon a#erwards the . !e following year Stargate co-wrote Norwegian duo and the American singer co-wrote and co-produced worldwide hits like Beyoncé and the single So Sick, which went on to become a US ’s , Rihanna’s Don’t Stop !e and UK #1. Music, and ’s With You. !e following year they had major success with Rihanna’s Take Since then Stargate have become "rst-call A Bow, and Ne-Yo’s Grammy-winning Miss songwriters and producers for American R&B Independent. In the last two years the tsunami and pop acts like Beyoncé, Rihanna, , of Stargate hits has given way to a slightly more Chris Brown, , , Mary J surfable wave (which would still be the envy of most Blige, and many others. !eir e$orts earned them songwriters), with hits like Flo Rida’s , a Grammy in 2008 for Best R&B Song for Ne-Yo’s Beyoncé’s Broken-Hearted Girl, and early this year Miss Independent, and several other nominations, Mary J Blige’s I Am. including this year, in the Album Of !e Year category, for their work on Beyoncé’s I Am… Sasha CHORDS & MELODY Fierce. (!e duo co-wrote and co-produced two It’d be hard to point to a signature Stargate style. songs on the album, including the single, Broken- !ere is, however, a thread that unities Hearted Girl.) Stargate now have a studio in Jay-Z’s the duo’s songs. Rather than a focus on beats, prestigious Roc-!e-Mic studio in New York, sonic experimentation or attitude, their songs

AT ! AT ! tend to succeed on the more old-fashioned singers to come up with their own melodies, eventually made more sense to work on just one qualities of melody, chord progression, and which we can then edit. platform, and ProTools was the more convenient emotion. In addition, their productions are of the two. In the end it doesn’t really matter “#e other thing we discovered with So Sick always wholly supportive of the song, many of what you use. It’s all about ideas now, not the is how simple a good song can be. You don’t which are minor key ballads or medium- equipment. Anyone with a laptop and a small have to have loads of vocal harmonies and numbers that allow the singer space to shine. keyboard can create records that sound just as overlapping lines in the background. #e most It’s understandable that all this makes Stargate good as the ones on the radio. important thing is to have one great lead vocal popular with singers. What’s more, Hermansen throughout the song. You can sprinkle it with “Tor and I both play keyboards, and we have and Eriksen also almost always co-write their all sorts of stu$ but you try to keep it focussed all the di$erent Yamaha Motifs: the ES, the hits with fellow songwriters, and o!en with the on the lead vocal and make sure the melody and EXS, and so on. #e Motif ES is my master singer, which gives the latter even greater scope lyrics are great.” keyboard. We also have the Roland Fantom to make the song his or her own, not to mention and Fantom-G, and several older modules, like that it also allows for a share in the royalties. GEAR AT THE GATE the Roland JV and Proteus 2000, but we rarely Eriksen appears proud of Stargate’s non-ego Like more and more hit makers these days, use them any more. #ese days we mainly use approach, and explains that it’s the result of the Stargate weave their magic on a state-of-the-art so!-samplers and so!-synths, the main ones epiphany that lay at the heart of the creative ProTools system, and little else. Says Eriksen, “As being Digidesign’s Structure and Access Virus outburst that followed meeting Ne-Yo in 2005. you know, everything is moving towards smaller Indigo. We also use XPand! a lot and the new Eriksen: “So Sick was de"nitely an eye-opener production facilities these days. You don’t really Transfuser so!ware, which allows us to chop for us in that it really worked to have the singer need big consoles or lots of outboard anymore up and mess with the sounds. We have pretty write the lyrics. When we lived in Europe we to make a good sounding record. We have a much every so!-synth on the market, and used to write most of the lyrics ourselves. We’d G-Series SSL at Roc-#e-Mic, but we only use several symphonic sample and drum libraries. hum melodies into a dictaphone and I used to four channels of it: two for ProTools and two for Actually, it’s a real danger, having too much sing on our early demos, which taught us about the iPod. We do everything in the box and the stu$ and too many possibilities, which is why what makes a good vocal melody. #ese days desk is just there to make our room look like a we o!en go back to our own sample libraries. we really enjoy working with American lyricists real studio (laughs). Back in the days in But to be honest, we don’t really care whether and top writers. #ey’re on another level we used quite a bit of outboard, but now it’s all we use a preset or our own sound. O!en we lyrically, and this gives us the space to focus about plug-ins. I think we were one of the "rst start with a preset and modify it; at other times on writing and recording, which is the part to move to ProTools for song writing… that was we create a sound from scratch. We don’t focus we love the most. We put a lot of instrumental 10 years ago now. Before that we’d been using too much on the sounds – more on the ideas melodies in our music that singers and lyricists Cubase for the previous 10. Cubase was much and the song writing.” can use and adapt. Our goal is also to inspire better for MIDI at the time, but because we were doing the vocal recording in ProTools, it

THE STARGATE TOUCH: Mikkel Eriksen on writing some of the Norwegian duo’s greatest hits. Amund and Espen, and happened, until Beyoncé song, because we find it melody so various writers we arranged them and heard it. She loved it and hard writing a great song had a stab at finishing added bass and drums, recorded it, but it didn’t on just one chord. But if the song. The first two or strings and melodies, and seem to fit on the album you do it right, you can three attempts weren’t everything else. The chords she was doing at the time, make it work, and this good enough, and then he were leaning towards B’Day, which was supposed song is a good example had the idea of putting us country, so we had fun to be a hard-hitting club of one that works. We’d together with Amanda and exploring something new. album. Finally, one of the written the backing track Ian, who we hadn’t heard Ne-Yo is also not locked producers on the album, a year earlier, and played of, and they wrote the lyric into one genre, and when Swizz Beats, said that it to one of our managers and the melody. It originally IRREPLACEABLE (!""#) TyTy (Tyran Smith), who had a Spanish title and we presented the song to she’d be crazy not to BEAUTIFUL LIAR (!""$) Artist: Beyoncé. loved the track and said different lyrics, but then him, he wrote lyrics to it include the song on the Artists: Shakira and Writers: Shaffer ‘Ne-Yo’ that it’d be perfect for a Tor said, “You have that and added a melody… and album. It was released on Beyoncé. Smith, Mikkel Eriksen, between Shakira and line beautiful liar in one magic happened. It was the album as track number Writers: Mikkel Eriksen, Tor Hermansen, Espen Beyoncé. We were like, of the verses, why not use actually an A&R person nine, and then spent "# Tor Hermansen, Amanda Lind, Amund Bjorklund, ‘yeah, right’ and laughing that as a feature?” So that who suggested that the weeks at number one as Ghost, , Beyoncé Beyoncé Knowles. Knowles. and shaking our heads became the punchline. We song would work better a single, and in the new and thinking it couldn’t be presented it to Beyoncé, “This song began with sung by a female. A couple edition of the album it’s the Eriksen: “This song is very done. But he was really who loved it and added her some chords of labels wanted the song, second song, immediately simple. Most of the time devoted to the idea. We own twist to the lyrics and that were given to us by but for a while nothing after Beautiful Liar.” we have more chords in a didn’t have a lyric or a top then recorded a version

AT ! WRITING TOOLS SPONTANEOUS & QUICK don’t think of any artist in particular. We just Stargate are thoroughly 21st century creators in According to interview, write songs, and it’s only later that we might "nd that they record whatever they come up with Stargate o$en write three or four songs a day. out who the song’s best suited to. If we were to directly into their DAW. No sonic notepads or Eriksen admits that this staggering creative pace write a song for , for instance, demos here. “We only write when we’re in our is normal for them. “We may have 500 song the risk is that we might limit ourselves by studio,” asserts Eriksen. “Basically, Tor and I ideas a year, though good "nished songs amount thinking, ‘it has to be in this genre – she sings are standing in front of each other, each of us to about one or 200 per year. As I’ve said, we’ve like this, and it can’t sound like that.’ It’s better behind a keyboard, and we jam. We get sounds developed our cra$ over a long time, so when to just create something that you love, and then and we start playing melodic ideas and feels, we have an idea it’s easy for us to execute it. I can a$erwards think, ‘oh, this would be a good song and when one of us gets something the other have the right sounds in "ve minutes, and we for Whitney Houston.’ It’s also o$en the case likes, the other might say, ‘Oh, do that again,’ or have very e!ective and quick ways of working that songs work in ways that you initially didn’t ‘why not try this chord instead,’ and so on. We’re without compromising quality. One thing that think would make a good "t. Irreplaceable, going for a unique feel, or melody, or chord makes things more straightforward is that, by for instance, wasn’t written for Beyoncé, and progression, or an interesting sound – anything focusing on melodic ideas, we’ve learnt that we nobody seemed to think it would "t the R&B can be an inspiration, although we rarely start can keep tracks open and sparse. If a core idea genre – it was just too di!erent to be played on o! with a beat. Most of the time we start with is good enough, you don’t need "ve sounds the radio. Even a$er Beyoncé recorded it people a melody or a chord progression. We put a lot doing the same thing. When a song is played were still convinced radio stations wouldn’t of thought and attention into having strong on the radio and compressed by the station, the play it. And then suddenly everybody was melodies in our tracks, and the feedback we get fewer elements you have in a track the better it playing it! A good song is a good song, no from singers and lyricists is that they love that sounds. In the R&B genre things sound better matter how you wrap it.” there are already so many melodies in the track stripped down. For that reason we try to focus WRITTEN & RECORDED IN TWO HOURS they can use. on simplicity and primary colours in our songs and . We use bright red and yellow Stargate and Ne-Yo’s commercial and creative “Although we sometimes have ProTools running and try to keep them separate.” American breakthrough, So Sick, has since while we’re improvising, we normally don’t become a blueprint for the Norwegian duo’s record anything at that stage. We generally Another element that adds to the duo’s way of working. #e simplicity of the song is prefer to develop a musical core that we re"ne productivity is the fact that they prefer to write embodied in the basic chord sequence – Ebm, and develop "rst, and it’s only then that we songs for the pure fun of it. Although they do B, Abm, Db – and then a pedal B chord. Erikson record into ProTools. From there we start write to order, it’s not their preference. Eriksen: traces the song’s genesis and how it shaped their layering, adding other sounds and melodies, a “We sometimes have speci"c sessions for an working methods: “#e song consists of a good drum track, and so on. #en, later, we might artist or a record label, but experience has feel in the harp sound, three drums sounds, change things around or strip things back, and taught us that the best stu! comes when we an Indigo bass, and a lead synth – that’s it. We only keep the three most unique elements. actually wrote the song in Ebm, because it’s very easy as keyboard players to just start something in Am or F or whatever and fall into a pattern, and just play the same chords over and over. So sometimes we choose to start a song in a strange key so you have to search and stumble across of it, but they couldn’t get one chord and wrote the Shakira to feature on the lyrics and then he added interesting things along the way. In the end the song in time for the release a falsetto voice that we chord sequence in So Sick is pretty standard, of B’Day. A few months recorded as a demo. From but I don’t think we would have arrived at that later Shakira agreed to sing there we proceeded to choice of notes had we written it in another key. on the track, and recorded change the entire backing the vocal. Her people also track around his vocal. “#e song started with me playing the harp added the ethnic strings We changed the chords, sound on the keyboard and a theme that was and percussion break. The everything, and this is song became a huge hit where that four-on-the- much longer. Tor then said, “Why don’t you just around the world and this BROKEN-HEARTED GIRL floor piano emerged. The repeat the "rst section?” We tried that, and it version is now included ("##$) Artist: Beyoncé on the new version of Writers: Beyoncé Knowles, song is in Dm. I suppose really worked. Writing it was very spontaneous B’Day. It illustrates for us Kenneth ‘’ many of our songs are in and quick; I think we wrote and recorded the minor keys. We probably the importance of having Edmonds, Stargate. whole track in 25 minutes! Ne-Yo loved it when dedicated people around lean towards more a “Originally this was a moody, melodic expression. he heard it, and he used the harp tune at the who believe in your ideas classic, full R&B track that and your music and push it It’s what comes most beginning of the song as the basis for his vocal we wrote with Babyface. naturally to us.” forward to make it happen.” He came in and changed melody, plus he wrote the lyrics in maybe half an hour. We then recorded what was intended as a

AT ! quick demo of his vocal. I think he did one take for the verses and a couple of vocal overdubs, which took another half hour, and that became the actual vocal on the !nished version. So the whole song took less than two hours, from improvising the !rst notes to the end result. It just shows that it doesn’t necessarily take long to create something great.”

GREATEST FEELING In addition to a penchant for simplicity, speed and !lling their songs full of melodies, several formula, introducing it on Irreplaceable, and the parts that are good and cut those out other working methods and approaches then allegedly repeating the idea on With You, immediately and drag them down to a new emerged from Stargate’s experience of co-writing Hate !at I Love You, and ’s Tattoo. track, while remembering what was great about So Sick with Ne-Yo. "ere’s a total openness Erikson seems relaxed about this criticism. In that section. Once I have enough sections, I drag in writing songs together with others, as well fact, the only hint of agitation comes when the all of them to a new track, and get the transitions as creating clear arrangements and structures discussion veers towards the question about right and have a listen. If it’s good enough we without becoming attached to them. “When Ne- whether Hermansen and he consciously tailor move on. If not, we record more. It’s a much Yo !rst heard the song, the whole structure of their work for the hit parades. more e%cient way of comp’ing than recording 20 tracks and then having to listen to all of them So Sick was pretty much the way it is today. We “With You and Irreplaceable both have again before comp’ing them.” always try to have the structure of our songs and strumming and similar drum sounds,” the arrangements very clear in our recordings. acknowledged the Norwegian. “But the songs VOCAL CHORDS, NOT VOCAL CHAIN We’ll have the verses and choruses and bridges are very di$erent. If you listen to any successful Eriksen is by all accounts a tech-head, so it’s and transitions complete. Of course a singer or producer or writing team, it’s easy to hear that interesting to hear him – time and time again another co-writer may want to extend or shorten they have a certain expression and a certain – de-emphasise the importance of gear. Just parts of the song, but it’s much easier to do that sound. I don’t think anyone should be afraid of like he’d reckoned that everyone with a laptop if the song is already very structured to begin that. You’re searching for that unique sound all and a keyboard can get the same quality of with. And in some cases we’ll completely change the time, and when you !nd it, you shouldn’t productions as can be heard on the radio, he also our backing a#er the singer has overdubbed be afraid to re-use it. But it’s not a commercial enthusiastically relates how recording vocalists his or her vocal. We might change the beat, decision. We don’t think of the pop market while in the US led to another revelatory ‘the-gear- or the chords, or completely re-arrange the we write. Even from very early on in Norway we doesn’t-matter’ experience. “We worked with a song. In Take A Bow [a UK and US No.1 for had critics saying that we were writing music lot of great singers in Europe, and were always Rihanna in 2008] for instance, our original track from a formula, but basically we just write the trying to get that sparkling and fat American had an almost Asian feel, inspired by Ryuichi music that we love, and we’ve always loved pop vocal sound, but we never managed it. We Sakamoto. It was much more le#-!eld, and then music. It’s what comes naturally to us. We never always wondered how they did it and when we a#er Ne-Yo wrote the lyrics and melody, we think: ‘we have to make this sound right for the !nally came here to New York we discovered changed the whole beat and made the song more radio so that it will sell.’ "e best stu$ we make what it was. It wasn’t about the microphone straightforward. is the stu$ we’re inspired by. "at’s our starting chain, or the microphone, or the EQs – it’s about “We’ll o#en try le#-!eld ideas that we later point, our motivation for doing it. "e greatest the vocalist. "e best vocalists in the world just adapt. We constantly search for di$erent sounds feeling is when you start the day with nothing, have that sound in their voice. Basically, when and di$erent inspirations. You don’t want to and by the end of the evening you’ve created I’m recording vocals nowadays, it’s really just be stuck in one lane and just repeat versions of something special.” a matter of not f**king it up. I’ll usually have a your last hit record. We also sometimes use the In talking about pursuing a unique sound, very simple vocal chain and will just add a little considerable skills of and Amund Eriksen steered the conversation to the other bit of sparkle, some compression and an e$ect Bjorklund, a Norwegian writing and production aspect of Stargate’s work: they produce all the of choice, and it will sound great. For this reason team called Espionage, who sometimes record songs that they (co-)write. “In fact, we also we’re not very particular about the gear we use.” guitars for us. "ey’re great song writers – they engineer almost everything in our songs,” adds Moving on to the last stage of the production had the guitar idea for Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable, Eriksen, “apart from occasionally the vocals process – mixing – legendary British mixer Rihanna’s Hate !at I Love You and Chris or the strings. But whatever is recorded in our Spike Stent recently commented that the Brown’s With You. We also sometimes use guitar studio I record myself. It’s so much quicker than di$erences between British and American pop parts by Bernt Rune Stray who, for instance, telling someone to press record or explaining is largely about the mixing stage. Eriksen agrees. appears in the track Closer by Ne-Yo. He which takes to keep. Many artists are surprised “Somehow the music sounds warmer and richer originally sent an idea to us in 6/8 – we sampled that we do our own vocal engineering, but in America, and more bass heavy, and they have it, chopped it up and totally changed the feel. I’ve been doing it for 15-20 years and I’m very a fantastic vocal sound. In England the music Sometimes it’s inspiring to use someone else’s speci!c about how I want it. Getting a good tends to be more mid heavy, and sharper. It’s starting point. We use ideas like that almost as vocal sound makes a big di$erence to the like a di$erent expression. I don’t know exactly a sample.” production. "e gear I use depends on the why this happened, because we all use the same For this very reason many Stargate-written vocalist, but we o#en use the Blue microphone, equipment. It must be just a matter of taste. All and produced songs have an extended list of which we like a lot, and that goes into an I know is that our sound has changed since we writing credits. Given Stargate’s commitment to Avalon compressor and from there straight came to America, and we’ve found our own reinvent themselves and their eagerness to write into ProTools. We also love and use the classic expression here.” with many others in the process, it’s perhaps Neumann mics and the AKG C12. surprising that some critics have accused them “I’ve also developed a handy technique for of repeating an ‘acoustic-guitars-in-R&B’ comp’ing vocals. While recording I mark

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