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05-08 Butch Walker's American Love S
01-19 Butch Walker covers Survivor
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Chances are you’ve heard a Butch Walker song, whether you realise it or not; he’s one of the biggest producers in commercial pop, and
hardly without justification. In the past couple of years alone, he’s written and produced hit singles for Avril Lavigne (‘My Happy Ending’),
Bowling For Soup (‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’), American Hi-Fi (‘Geeks Get The Girls’) and Sevendust (‘Failure’), not to mention the folk
we’d rather not mention. Even leading music magazine and beacon of credibility Rolling Stone named him ‘Hot Producer of the Year’ in
2005!Like ...read more
Chances are you’ve heard a Butch Walker song, whether you realise it or not; he’s one of the biggest producers in commercial pop, and
hardly without justification. In the past couple of years alone, he’s written and produced hit singles for Avril Lavigne (‘My Happy Ending’),
Bowling For Soup (‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’), American Hi-Fi (‘Geeks Get The Girls’) and Sevendust (‘Failure’), not to mention the folk
we’d rather not mention. Even leading music magazine and beacon of credibility Rolling Stone named him ‘Hot Producer of the Year’ in
2005!Like many in his business, he claims the production thing merely allows him the freedom to make the music he wants to make as a solo
artist, and his story seems to check out. He released The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Let’s-Go-Out-Tonites (no prizes for
guessing the origin,) a glam rock revival record that somehow found itself with a radio single, thanks in no small part to Ms. Lavigne, who
stars in the promo clip for ‘Bethamphetamine (Pretty, Pretty).’The relationship to Avril isn’t very interesting (they probably slept together),
but Walker opened for her at various stages on her worldwide tour last year and gained a bunch of pint-sized fans who make it impossible for
me to reach the front of the stage anymore, even though I could, physically, just stand on them.That’s just not done.He’s had a fleeting
relationship with the record industry ever since his former band Marvelous 3 had a hit with ‘Freak of the Week’ from their second record
Hey! Album right when pop-punk was at its peak; as that scene grew stale, the label withdrew promotion for the band, prompting them
to produce the most overblown, unmarketable stadium rock album they could. The result was ReadySexGo!- it didn’t sell. So the band
broke up, and Walker took up producing, before signing to Arista Records (home to every bland r&b singer you’ve ever forgotten about,) who
promptly refused to promote his record.With Arista bankrolling his first solo album for apparently no reason, Butch was once again free to do
whatever he liked to do in the studio, only this time he had a couple years of accumulated studio experience; the result, 2002’s Left of
Self-Centered, was his most rounded effort to date. If he’d named the album Curriculum Vitae, which he should have, he may just
have got the job because the album is as accurate a summationof his musical career as is mechanically possible: there was plenty of the
punky glammed-up pop of old, as well as more mature compositions taking in influences from early U2 to Rick Springfield and back through
Todd Rundgren.Letters is an anomaly in his catalogue, but the good kind. He describes it himself as an “emo-tastic” record, but at the
risk of offending the legions of warriors who trawl the internets to cuss out anyone who mislabels a dead genre, I’ll use a more conventional
term: introspective. However you choose to label it, Letters was the album that elevated Walker from a purveyor of a few great power-
pop albums to all-round pop mastermind. It’s been his meal ticket ever since, and it’s reached a point where he can choosewhich production
projects to take on- a big deal, considering he worked with Lindsay Lohan last year.So Butch Walker is hot sh[size=2]it[/size]. Hard to
believe he used to be a member of the heavy metal equivalent of the Ying Yang Twins, isn’t it? He’s come a long way since he played guitar
for Poison knock-offs SouthGang, and there’s not even space to mention his mid-90s funk revival act The Floyds, so I won’t. But I will allow
the man’s music to speak for itself; for almost twenty years Butch Walker has produced some of the most enduring and most funnest pop
music on earth. Enjoy!The next few months see the release of a flurry of Walker-produced cuts: he’s produced tracks on the new Pete Yorn,
All-American Rejects, Avril Lavigne and Hot Hot Heat albums, while he’s done his one-time idol Tommy Lee a favour in producing Rock Star
Supernova’s upcoming, as-yet-untitled album: if the combination of Butch, Gilby Clarke and Tommy Lee doesn’t make you wince with
excitement… then good for you. « hide |
Similar Bands: Marvelous 3, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Everybody Else, Brian Fallon Contributors: SteveP, morrissey, Willie, SHADOWS AND DUST, Dave de Sylvia, Jom, taylormemer, Dave de Sylvia,
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