If you've heard anything about Chris Lord-Alge, you know he's a music industry heavyweight. In this segment Paul Moak talks about Chris Lord-Alge mixing Goodbye June's Single, Daisy.
One of the songs that Chris Lord-Alge ended up mixing, we had already put it out on the radio on Lightning 100. It had been in their top 100 songs of 2014 and had gotten a lot of rotation. I was used to hearing it on the radio in my car, it's called “Daisy.”
It was a song I wrote with the band, and then Interscope comes in and signs the band and we make the rest of their record. And so we had, maybe, four or five songs from the original record that we did with the mom and pop label then a bunch of new songs that they've written with the new record deal. And so by the time Chris Lord-Alge mixed it, we had been living with it for like three years, and I didn't think it was gonna be a good idea.
But it's kind of one of those things where, okay, if we have to have this dude's name on this to get the label excited about it, then that's what we're gonna have to do. But they revised, I think it was seven revisions, with him which he does not do... but I think he's at a point in his career right now where maybe he's having a hustle a little more. Because, you know, after American Idiot, it was like CLA on everything, and it's the way it works for everybody. One minute you can't get arrested and then the next minute everybody wants you to work on their record.
So I think we hit him up in a point where he was willing to do revisions and the band was so stuck on the way that the song sounded because they've been living with it for three years that when it came back and it was way more pop and way more radio, and the vocal was way out front... which the singer is, like any singer, is self-conscious about his own voice. And we've had like a cool slap back like RE-201 printed with the vocal that was really hot in my mix and was non-existent and at first that freaked the singer out.
The guitars actually I thought were a lot better because he carved out this magical space for them with the drums. Like where it wasn't our kick and snare, you know, and so they went back to him seven times and that was pretty brutal, but the label is excited about the song.
I like our old mix better, yeah, but you know there comes a point though, man, it's like if you're gonna produce something and mix it there's an objectivity that gets lost... especially when you're dealing with label stuff. Sometimes it's not about “is this mix gonna be better,” it was, you know, it's important for the label to feel like we had this name-brand guy on the records so that we can go tell all the the people in the press it was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge, and that is worth something. I was really happy with where it landed, I like the version that we had better, but I'm totally behind this version and I bet it will sound way better on the radio which is what he is known for.