Babyface 'Playlist' album

10-time Grammy award-winning megastar Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, an icon figure of live performance, songwriting, and production whose work on his own music and others’ has resulted in more than 100 million career sales, has completed his 11th album, PLAYLIST, which will arrive in stores September 18th as the first album on the newly re-launched Mercury Records label, it was announced today by Antonio “L.A.” Reid, Chairman Island Def Jam Music Group and David Massey, President, Mercury Records.

PLAYLIST will be Babyface’s first album devoted (mostly) to cover versions of some of his favorite songs, among them James Taylor’s “Fire & Rain,” Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” Dan Fogelberg’s “Longer,” Jim Croce's "Time In A Bottle," Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight," and many others. The album will also include original material.

Over the course of the ’90s, Babyface not only distinguished himself as the decade’s single greatest hitmaker, but as one of the greatest hitmakers in the history of popular music. His imprint (to date) extends to over 125 top 10 pop and R&B hits which include 47 #1 R&B hits, 51 top 10 pop hits, and 16 #1 pop hits. For one span of time on Billboard’s pop and R&B charts, Babyface was listed as the writer, producer and/or performer on twelve separate songs in the Top 20.

His countless Grammy awards (which include Producer Of the Year in 1995, ’96 and ’97 – the only person in history to win three consecutive years), NAACP Image Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and American Music Awards are just one indication of Babyface’s penetration into pop culture. In addition to co-founding LaFace Records with Antonio “L.A.” Reid in 1989 (home of Toni Braxton, OutKast, TLC, Pink and Usher), Babyface’s name is linked to the world’s biggest-selling and most universally popular recording artists – including Mary J. Blige, Boyz II Men, Brandy, Toni Braxton, Tevin Campbell, Mariah Carey, Eric Clapton, Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin, Dru Hill, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Lionel Richie, TLC, and Vanessa Williams – to name a few.

Babyface is also responsible for such phenomena as the 7 million-selling Waiting To Exhale movie soundtrack album, and the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games anthem “Power Of the Dream” (which he co-wrote, and which was sung by Celine Dion). As a movie producer, Babyface’s company debuted in 1997 with Soul Food (which grossed over $43 million, and spun off a double-platinum soundtrack album), followed by Hav Plenty in 1998, Light It Up in 1999 and Josie & The Pussycats (2001).

Babyface’s albums and singles include: Lovers By Babyface (1987); Tender Lover (1989, double-platinum), a #1 R&B album in Billboard for 11 weeks, including the #1 R&B singles “It’s No Crime” and “Tender Love,” “Whip Appeal” (#2), and “My Kinda Girl” (#3); For the Cool In You (1993, triple-platinum), on the R&B album chart for 87 weeks, with the top 10 R&B singles “For the Cool In You,” “Never Keeping Secrets,” “And Our Feelings,” and “When Can I See You”; The Day (1996, double-platinum), with the top 5 R&B/pop crossover hits “This Is For the Lover In You” (platinum) and “Every Time I Close My Eyes” (gold); MTV Unplugged NYC 1997 (gold); Christmas With Babyface (1998); Face2Face (2001); and Grown & Sexy (2005).

Recipient of the NAACP Lifetime achievement Award, the Essence Award For Excellence, GQ magazine’s Man Of the Year honor, and named One Of the Most Influential People In America by TIME magazine, Babyface’s caring and generosity are well-known. He is national spokesman for the Boarder Baby Project in Washington, DC, which provides transitional housing for babies abandoned at birth, awaiting adoption.

In July 1999, Babyface became the largest single personal donor to VH1’s “Save the Music” campaign when he donated $60,000 to the campaign in his home state of Indiana, to help improve the quality of music education in public schools by restoring and supporting music programs and raising public awareness. That same month in Indianapolis, the Governor of Indiana renamed a 23-mile stretch of Interstate 65 “Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds Highway,” the first time that a living African-American has been bestowed an honor of such magnitude.

biography
“These songs came from memories, and these songs helped shape who I am – and they’re still shaping who I am,” says Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds about his beautifully emotional new album, Playlist. “They shaped my past and now they’re shaping my future.”

Indeed, eight of Playlist’s ten songs loom large in the memory of just about anyone who has loved popular music for the past three decades. The titles and the original performers alone constitute a pop-radio dream team: “Wonderful Tonight” (Eric Clapton); “Shower the People” and “Fire and Rain” (James Taylor); “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (Bob Dylan); “Please Come To Boston” (Dave Loggins); “Longer” (Dan Fogelberg); “Time in a Bottle” (Jim Croce), and “Diary” (Bread).

Much loved as they are, however, these songs are not necessarily the first ones that fans would associate with Edmonds, as he himself admits. “Coming from ‘Whip Appeal’ to these songs, it seems like a stretch,” he says with a chuckle. “But it doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels pretty natural.” Indeed, while being characteristically respectful of the original versions, Edmonds layers in rhythmic emphases that make the songs move sensually on the bottom as the melodies float delicately on top. The result is immediately accessible acoustic soul music; old, cherished memories made new again.

Playlist was a labor of love for Edmonds because, as is the case with so many millions of other people, these songs are a big part of the reason that he fell in love with music in the first place. “When I was in the seventh or eighth grade, I would go to church on Sunday, and I’d listen to the music,” Edmonds recalls about his childhood in Indianapolis. “That was the fun part for me. But when the preacher started preaching, I would leave and go to the car and listen to the radio. Normally, I would listen to the R&B station, but they’d be playing church music, too. So I’d switch to the AM pop station, and that’s where I was introduced to James Taylor, Bread, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton. I was learning how to play guitar, it was acoustic music, and it talked to me. I loved it.”

Performing songs that have meant so much to you for so long can present its own challenges, however. How do you live up to the artists who have set the standard by which you measure yourself? Edmonds had to confront that issue in the studio. “Look, I could have done a whole record of James Taylor songs, I love his work so much,” Edmonds says. “What I appreciate about him is that he has so much love in his voice – it’s so calming and cool. But initially when I sang ‘Shower the People,’ I realized that I wasn’t even close to the feeling that he gives. So I studied him to understand how he makes it feel so good, and ultimately I was able to get into that space.”

Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” also required some thought – even though (or maybe because) one of Edmonds’ children is named Dylan in honor of the great songwriter. “I was a little afraid of doing it, because in no way is my voice close to Dylan’s,” Edmonds says. “His voice is so free and rugged. But that song has always been great. And, finally, that’s one of the tests of great music: a great song is always a great song.”

Of course, Edmonds has worked with Eric Clapton – most notably on the Grammy-winning single “Change the World” – so the ballad “Wonderful Tonight” was a natural choice. “That’s one of his songs that I’ve always loved, because he doesn’t do a lot of romantic songs,” Edmonds says, laughing. “That one was an easy fit.”

Bread’s “Diary,” meanwhile, with its moving thematic twist and vision of love as a potentially painful mystery, is one of the places where Edmonds first encounters the atmosphere that would inhabit so much of his own music. “That’s one of the first songs I heard on that AM radio station that really hit me,” he recalls. “That was part of my training – the bittersweet romance, being in love, being heartbroken. That was the music that helped shape that.”

Playlist’s ultimate challenge, needless to say, was coming up with a couple of new songs that fit the album’s richly textured mood. “That was a difficult task – like, okay, now you’re going to add two songs of your own and compete with these?” Edmonds says. “But I’m lucky. I feel that I wrote two songs that can stand with everything else. They fit right in.”

There’s no question that “Not Going Nowhere” will touch the heart of anyone who has had to reassure his or her children that divorce won’t mean a separation between parent and child. For Edmonds, whose amicable split from his wife Tracey was national news awhile back, the song came directly from real life. “I played the chords one day, and those words just flowed out like a conversation,” Edmonds says. “It’s part of a conversation that both Tracey and I had with our kids. We told them that we’re still the best of friends, and that nothing was going to change. We wanted to make them feel secure.”

And “The Soldier Song,” too, grew out of a parent-child relationship after Edmonds visited a friend whose son had served in Iraq. “It brought it close to home, to see that connection,” he says. “Regardless of what your politics are, when these kids go over there, they believe that they are fighting for us. And they die for us. Whether the war is right or wrong, from their hearts, they’re fighting to make us safe. So we should remember them and respect them.”

In conclusion, Edmonds says that Playlist “is one of my favorite records that I’ve done. What’s cool is that it’s familiar, but it’s fresh. I want people to hear something they know as if they’re hearing it for the first time. And I hope a lot of people really care for it, because I would love to do more – and pull out more of my favorite memories.”

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Babyface - Playlist