Elliott Smith released five studio albums within his lifetime, and each is a worthy gateway. Bristling, sometimes harrowing folk? 1995's Elliott Smith. Sgt. Pepper's-scaled splendor? 2000's Figure 8, with 1998's XO as his Revolver. Want to split the difference? 1997's Either/Or.

Then, there's his raw, undiluted 1994 debut — released on Cavity Search, before he was even on Kill Rock Stars. That's Roman Candle, which turns 30 on July 14.

Like everything pre-XO, "studio album" is pretty much a misnomer; Roman Candle was recorded in the basement of the Victorian-style Portland house he shared with JJ Gonson, the manager of his then-band Heatmiser. Which — as Gonson admitted in the 2004 book Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing — "was not a pretty place."

"Lots of people had moved through that house, and the basement was piled high with abandoned stuff," he continued. "So he sort of carved out a little niche, set up a stool and a mic stand, and meticulously recorded the whole thing, going back and punching in tiny changes, sometimes a single word or chord."

While the homemade result is, arguably, Smith's least realized work, it has plenty of charm and intrigue on its own merits, especially in highlights like the shadowy title track and sweet-and-sour yet gorgeous "Condor Ave," which belongs on any list of his very best songs.

Even better, Roman Candle lays the blueprint for everything he'd accomplish in its wake — and stands tall as a watershed for lo-fi folk. Here are three reasons why.

The Sonics

Eventually, this voracious absorber of the rock canon would begin tinkering with tack pianos and mellotrons. But as early as Roman Candle, his core sound was cemented: panned, close-miked, harmonically complex acoustic guitars; double-tracked vocals; a hushed and spectral delivery.

Somewhat uncannily, cruddy equipment seemed to flatter Smith's aesthetic the best. "The wonderful breathy sound on Roman Candle is largely due to the quality of the mic, or lack of it," Gonson said in the book, characterizing his mic setup as "a little Radio Shack thing — the kind you used to get bundled with a tape recorder."

Part of his hushed approach may have been logistical. "He also sang quietly, perhaps so as not to be heard by all the people always coming and going upstairs, so you can hear every breath and string squeak." (A 2010 remaster by Larry Crane sanded down those harsh edges, in the hope that "the music would become more inviting and the sound would serve the songs better.)

The late Smith spawned a thousand imitators, all who learned that murmuring balladry into a tape recorder isn't a shortcut to magic — the easy way or hard way. (Celebrated artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens successfully assimilated his influence into their creative bank.)

But partly due to the blueprint of Roman Candle — a link in a chain with '80s lo-fi and the rest — this aesthetic proved desirable.

The Specificity

Many rookie songwriters throw out concrete details (highway numbers and pharmaceuticals, anyone?) as a shortcut to profundity. Smith's details always served the song, and the story.

"She took the Oldsmobile out past Condor Avenue," begins that titular song. "And she locked the car and slipped past into rhythmic quietude." This evocation of a totally unremarkable Portland street places the drama that ensues firmly in time and space.

"Drive All Over Town" conjures atmosphere from the get-go, too: "Two-dollar color pictures from a photo booth/ Dirty, stepped-on, lying out on the floor of their room." You can almost smell that image.

The Vulnerability

When Kill Rock Stars' Slim Moon first popped "Roman Candle" into a tour van's dashboard, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "It completely blew my mind," he later said. "I have never heard music as heartwrenchingly, gut-checkingly honest, intimate, and wise — before or since."

That was another one of Smith's superpowers: even as he tiptoed to the precipice of self-pity here and there, he never, ever BSed the listener.

"I want to hurt him/ I want to give him pain," he seethes in the chorus of "Roman Candle, about his allegedly abusive stepfather. "I'm a roman candle/ My head is full of flames." A searing sensation, as if you and Smith share a nervous system.

He'd pull off that magic trick again and again throughout his brilliant, troubled career — and it all started on Roman Candle.

He's Gonna Make It All OK: An Oral History Of Elliott Smith's Darkly Beautiful Self-Titled Album

"I'd lick the grief right off your lips."

Fans rejoiced at the tantalizing thought of new music from Billie Eilish after she captioned a passport-style Polaroid to her Instagram in January with those emotionally charged words. But the lyrics actually come from a hotly tipped singer/songwriter from the U.K. Eilish was referencing Arlo Parks' "Black Dog," a candid look at the realities of trying to help a friend living with depression. A year apart in age, Eilish and Parks represent a new generation of songwriters intent on tackling Gen Z's problems head-on.

It's not just Eilish who's singing the praises of Parks—the vanguard of the creative arts is rooting for the young singer. "Cola," from her 2019 debut EP Super Sad Generation, appeared in Michaela Coel's critically acclaimed HBO series, "I May Destroy You." Phoebe Bridgers and Florence Welch have shown love, too. Although the influencer generation has shifted the capacity to create stars from institutions to individuals, Parks has taken home a host of industry awards, too, landing a spot on the BBC Music Sound Of 2020 long list, which launched the careers of Michael Kiwanuka, Haim and Sam Smith, and NME's Essential New Artists For 2020 list.

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Parks has had a meteoric year, but she's remained undeterred by the pressure; she spent 2020 and early 2021 mostly confined to her childhood bedroom. She's gained and maintained a fan base via a social media presence as sincere and personal as her songs, emphasizing self-love and openness. Her lyrics tackle big subjects—unrequited love, addiction, mental health struggles, sexuality—and her vocals are tender, unflashy and inviting.

Themes like these are the bedrock of her debut album, Collapsed In Sunbeams, a series of vignettes describing friends and their problems tied together by a calm, wistful energy. (The album's title is lifted from British author Zadie Smith's 2005 novel, On Beauty.) Nodding to her influences, like Radiohead and Portishead, Collapsed In Sunbeams easily flits between lo-fi pop, R&B and the indie sounds of her youth. Yet the real beauty is in Parks' smart observations on life, which she tackles directly yet compassionately.

GRAMMY.com chatted with Arlo Parks about Collapsed In Sunbeams, her literature collection and how her heartfelt lyrics entered Eilish's imagination.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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What are you reading at the moment? I learned a new Japanese word recently—tsundoku, or the art of leaving a book unread after buying it. Are you like that?
I'm definitely like that! My favorite thing to do is wander around quaint little book shops in SoHo, like Skoob Books, and buying 10 books at once. I've got Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland, This Young Monster by Charlie Fox and The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst on my desk, to name a few. There's something so comforting about books as a little physical world to explore, but making the time to read them is a different story.

Aside from your musical influences, which artistic figures inspire you?
I'm obsessed with sensory, muscular writers like Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, and Raymond Carver. Some special books to me are Just Kids by Patti Smith, Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles and Blueberries by Ellena Savage. I'm also interested in [photographers] that capture youth culture and act like super-observant documentarians, like Wolfgang Tillmans, William Eggleston, and Nan Goldin.

In terms of films, I love Xavier Dolan—especially Mommy—[as well as] Wes Anderson's catalog, Vertigo by Hitchcock and quiet, sensitive films like In The Mood For Love by Wong Kar-Wai or Driveways by Andrew Ahn.

Can you remember which came first, writing stories or listening to music?
Listening to music came first. I remember sitting on the carpet in the living room and listening to everything from Françoise Hardy to My Funny Valentine by Chet Baker to Zombie by Fela Kuti. Music permeated the house, and the car rides to Sainsbury's. It's in all my conscious memory.

You're a prolific journal writer. Is that where your ideas for songs germinate?​
Definitely. This album was inspired by poring over old journals and picking out fragments of conversation, dissecting explosions of emotion and important stories [magnified] by adolescence. Journaling also allows me to have those quiet moments of introspection and makes me a more honest, focused, and experimental writer. Everything I write feeds into my songs.

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How did you go about recording Collapsed In Sunbeams?
It was recorded between my bedroom, a few Airbnbs, and two studios. I wrote the demos for "Portra 400" and "Bluish" in my bedroom and recorded the Bluish vocals at 3 a.m. at home. Most of the songs were written and recorded in Airbnbs in East London—Dalston and Hoxton.

It was a very organic and instinctive process. We approached this album on a song-by-song basis to make sure everything felt fresh, and the sonic palette was broad.

Your songs' emotional maturity is surprising given your age. Have you always been that emotionally in touch?

I've always been somebody who felt a lot all the time. That sensitivity and empathy is a big part of who I am, and I've always had a sense of self-awareness when it comes to my inner landscape. I learned a lot about emotion and communication just from being around very open people—from helping friends and understanding myself.

You've spoken elsewhere about being blessed with a supportive family, who helped with that emotional intelligence. What do they make of your new stardom? And what has it been like living with them while your career has skyrocketed?

They always say how proud they are of me, but there have been adjustments to be made. Being on TV or being recognized in the park, or being in the paper has taken some getting used to. It has felt so grounding to be surrounded by the people who know me and love me best during the chaos of this year, so I'm grateful for that. It's refreshing to watch some Hitchcock films with my mom or just chat with my brother between interviews. It centers me.

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"Black Dog" is particularly devastating, but elsewhere on the album, there's a more uplifting message. How can we maintain hope during this bleak period?
I think this album is an exercise in balance. Being a human being involves spikes of elation and dejection, and I wanted to explore both sides. Honestly, I would say try and make space for your own joy every day, whether it's going for a quick walk, getting a posh coffee, having a solo dance party or a bath with candles. Doing little things for yourself consistently and being aware that what is meant for you will not pass you by.

How do you feel about flaunting your influences? I can hear bits of Radiohead and Portishead.
It's super important to me. I'm a music lover before a music maker, and I love the idea of picking little elements of records I enjoy. Maybe a kick drum from [A Tribe Called Quest's] The Low End Theory, some guitar reverb from a Beach House song, a melodic approach from [Elliott Smith's] Either/Or, creating a unique collage.

I like paying homage to and basking in the songs that made me fall in love with music and allow me to fall more deeply in love every day.

Speaking of influences, Billie Eilish says she's a fan. So is Michaela Coel and Phoebe Bridgers. How do you cope knowing the cool kids are watching?
It's surreal to know that such powerful, unique human beings are a fan of my work. It's validating in a specific way because these are people I look up to.

You're very in touch with your fan base, particularly through your candid social media presence. What's been the most impactful fan reaction to your work?
I feel connected to my fans, there's a familial quality to [my] community, and I find that lovely. Someone said that "Eugene" helped them come out to their older sister and feel a sense of comfort in themselves and their sexuality. I also remember someone saying the only way their baby boy would sleep was listening to "Cola", which I thought was very wholesome.

Your natural lyricism and interest in words of all kinds lend themselves to rap. Can we expect that on future albums, or will you keep it centered around spoken-word for now?
Maybe so. Who knows? I'm a big fan of hip-hop. Artists like Navy Blue, MF Doom, and Earl Sweatshirt are so playful with language. The sky's the limit, and that's so exciting to me.

Phoebe Bridgers Talks 'Punisher,' Japanese Snacks & Introducing Conor Oberst To Memes

For Sadie Dupuis, Franz von Stuck’s portrait of the dancer Saharet was a face that launched a thousand plans.

While the painting, which Dupuis saw one evening at Seattle's Frye Art Gallery, immediately gave the artist the name for her second solo album, the rest of the work would fall to her. Fortunately, as the creative center behind the Boston indie rock outfit Speedy Ortiz, Dupuis is well-versed in the D.I.Y. musician’s life.

While 2016’s Slugger contrasted with Speedy’s sound as a more pop-forward vehicle for Dupuis, Haunted Painting (out Sept. 25) takes the project to another level entirely. As Sad13, Dupuis has already proven it’s possible to write a feel-good bop about consent in "Get A Yes," so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock that "WTD?" manages to blend shimmering synths with a message decrying eco-fascism.

Yet it isn’t one standout but the quality of the album as a whole that solidifies Haunted Painting as one of Dupuis’ most significant releases to date.

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From the mischievous and prescient "Ghost (Of A Good Time)" to the sweeping, contemplative "Take Care," this record finds Dupuis working towards what she’s previously described as her "most maximal" work yet. In part, Dupuis credits her mode of songwriting to the late David Berman, whom she noted was a master of walking the line between bouncy and bleak.

"I think that with both Silver Jews and Purple Mountains," Dupuis said, "as well as in his poetry; David Berman rode that line really, really well. Some of his saddest work is also his absolute funniest. As a guiding figure for me in my writing, I'm always trying to be conscious of that line. If a song feels like heavy subject matter, I'm trying to bring levity where it's possible, because I think the art that I admire most tries to strike that balance."

Striking a balance is nothing new for the 32-year-old, who in addition to touring relentlessly prior to onset of COVID, also runs her own music label, Wax Nine, as well as a poetry journal of the same name.

Though she may have a lot more time on her hands these days, last summer, Dupuis found herself booking local studio time during off-days from touring with Speedy to get her next solo project done. Never one to arrive unprepared, she also wrote every song on her new album specifically for each studio's gear list.

Prior to a session at San Francisco's Tiny Telephone, for instance, Dupuis wanted to be sure she could make full use of the studio’s legendary synthesizer collection.

"They have one of the more insane vintage synth collections of any studio I've worked in," she said. "My first instinct is piano, but I'm not good at it and I haven't reliably played it since I was a little kid. I knew there were all of these expensive synths at Tiny Telephone that I wanted to get on the record, so in the time leading up to being there, it was me just sitting at home with a little tiny practice keyboard, trying to be able to play those parts correctly."

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Commitment to vision is another thing Dupuis takes quite seriously.

After hosting a panel for Sonos focused on women in audio engineering, Dupuis went through her own album credits and realized that she was the only woman credited as a producer on her work.

"I had this awareness of all these awesome engineers," she explained, "but I hadn't worked with any of them, so that was part of the reason for me wanting to hire strictly women on this project."

As a result, Dupuis worked with only female audio engineers on Haunted Painting—eight in total—including Emily Lazar, Sarah Tudzin and Lily Wen. The latter of the three was actually once under the care of Dupuis when the artist worked as a summer camp counselor. Last year, the two joined forces at Figure 8 in Brooklyn to work on new Sad13 tracks featuring woodwinds and strings.

At Elliott Smith’s New Monkey studio, Dupuis teamed with Tudzin—who records and releases music as illuminati hotties—to figure out a way to sample Smith's microwave as means of incorporating his spirit into the recordings.

"When we were at New Monkey tracking ‘Oops...!’ and ‘Good Grief,’” Tudzin recalled, "we were perpetually in search of any instrument or sound that was unmistakably Elliott. There are a lot of beautiful instruments and pieces of gear there that belonged to him, and after pestering the staff about the story of the studio, we learned that even the furniture and decorations were his, including an essentially non-functioning microwave that no one wanted to get rid of."

Read More: He's Gonna Make It All OK: An Oral History Of Elliott Smith's Darkly Beautiful Self-Titled Album

The two joked about sampling the decrepit appliance before actually deciding to give it a shot. The final result, pitched as a synth, can be heard in the melody that ends "Good Grief."

The ways in which the experience of creating Haunted Painting are reflected in the finished product don’t end there.

Upon arriving at La La Land (an analog-only studio in Louisville) following a gig in Chicago, Dupuis discovered a block party borrowing power from the building had caused a fire to start. As a result, she altered some of her lyrics for her sessions there to refer to smoke. At Tiny Telephone, a broken harpsichord required Dupuis and engineer Maryam Qudus to "layer chains and ping pong balls on piano strings" to create a worthy substitute.

In one key area, however, Dupuis opted to cede control. Though she has done her own artwork for all her releases to date, she tasked the design of Haunted Painting’s cover to her mother.

"My mom, for most of my life, was a portrait painter," Dupuis explained, "but she stopped doing it as her main work after her car was hit by another car maybe a decade ago. She has chronic pain from that, so it's difficult for her to do portraiture, which is so detailed and time-intensive. She does plenty of other kinds of art, but she hadn't done a portrait in like a decade. The fact that she was even able to do this one, let alone that it looks so incredible, after 10 years away, is amazing. I think the world of my mom. She's a really cool artist and I probably wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if I hadn't had her as an example of someone doing creative work, so it's really nice to have her involved."

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From sampling Elliott Smith’s microwave to teaching herself how to compose for strings and woodwinds (again), Dupuis’ emphasis on Sad13 as a project solely of her own creation is undercut only by a seemingly inextinguishable desire to give back.

Be it writing artist bios for projects from Tudzin and Qudus as they worked with her in the studio or also finding the time to put together a heartfelt compilation honoring the late Adam Schlesinger earlier this year, Dupuis has often used any focus on herself as an opportunity to refract attention onto those she cherishes.

This time, however, the spotlight shines solely on her, and with good reason. In trying to summarizing all the countless elements that came together to create Haunted Painting, Dupuis once more turns to von Stuck, the painter who started on her on this project.

"One of the cool things about him," she recalled, "is that he would build the frames himself and that he considered the frame as part of the artwork. As someone who likes to play all of the instruments and use production as part of the song itself, I can relate to a perspective of wanting the whole thing to be one product."

Molly Tuttle & Producer Tony Berg Discuss the Cross-Country Making Of Her New Covers Album

The longer Elliott Smith has been gone, the closer his listeners have felt to him. Since his untimely death at 34 years old in 2003, Smith's closest friends and family have seen his masterfully empathic songwriting give that intimate companionship to countless fans. The 25th anniversary reissue of his self-titled album, due Aug. 28th via Kill Rock Stars, aims to bridge that gap. The expanded release allows those closest to Smith to share intimate memories and experiences with fans, and for fans to understand the real person behind the music.

Released in 1995, Elliott Smith found the songwriter gaining an increasing profile in the Portland, Oregon, scene and far afield. Smith mined his darkness and exposed it for the world, redoubling Heatmiser’s cleverly twisted songwriting and Roman Candle's homemade flame.

The reissue is a document of Smith's heart and mind, but also of the tight-knit community surrounding him. The remastered take on the record itself was overseen by producer/engineer Larry Crane, a friend and collaborator of Smith's who has since become the official archivist for the Smith family. The reissue also includes Live at Umbra Penumbra, the earliest known live recording of Smith performing as a solo act. Not only does the bonus disc share an up close and personal account of Smith at his rawest, but Crane's experience at the venue and deft hand editing the original cassette tape bring the man behind the legend closer into focus. The package also includes a coffee table book full of handwritten lyrics, notes written by peers about the album's creation and a series of previously never-before-seen pictures by the artist behind the cover image—another close friend of Smith's, JJ Gonson. Her kinetic photographs have been beloved the world over for their ability to document an entire world; these are not pictures of an artist, but rather a life story of the emotions, experiences and memories of the moment.

To honor the duality of image and sound that comprises the 25th anniversary re-release of Elliott Smith, Crane and Gonson reflect on their relationships with the songwriter, the record’s origins, the process of assembling the anniversary edition and Smith’s impact on their lives—and ours.

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"We were kids not doing our jobs"

JJ Gonson: We were all very tight. Elliott and Neil [Gust, Heatmiser guitarist/vocalist], when they first came from college, would come in and sit at the coffee bar where I was a baker, and we would just all hang out because we were kids not doing our jobs. There probably wasn't much to do. The muffins were made. And we'd sit there and talk about music and art.

Larry Crane: I wasn't even friends with Elliott at that point. I didn't know him, but I would see him around. I'd see JJ around, with her blue hair. Even when I first moved to town in ‘93, I remember being at parties with my roommates. We'd be at some party and they'd be like, "Oh, Neil Gust from Heatmiser is here." It used to be you’d go downtown or to a few places on the East side to see shows and there weren't even that many bars or pubs that weren't working class, blue collar, working dude bars. So we’d all end up in the same places, hanging out and the same venues, seeing the same kind of underground music.

I saw Heatmiser play a few times when I moved to town, but I’ve got to admit, I wasn't that interested. In fact, I think I even wrote a review of Yellow No. 5 for a little magazine called Snipe Hunt that was going then. But I remember seeing Heatmiser and thinking, "Oh gosh, another guitar band. Who cares?" When grunge hit and ruined Seattle, it didn't initially really affect Portland much and everyone would start bands here that were unique, like Crackerbash, Calamity Jane, Sprinkler, and the Spinanes.

Roman Candle came out on Cavity Search Records, which our friends Denny [Swofford] and Christopher [Cooper] ran. JJ is the one that instigated all that, of course. It got a fair amount of attention. I was working in a pub at that time, and we always had a budget to buy CDs to play at the pub. My manager bought Elliott's album, and I was like, "Oh, it kind of sounds like Nick Drake or something." It was cool and moody. But at that point, I don't think Elliott played any shows solo, or at least I don't have any record of it. So [the recordings on the bonus disc] are really the start of him playing out live, one of his earliest shows. But he had already written a lot of the stuff that would be the second album.

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The two songs that people always react to are "Needle in the Hay" and "Christian Brothers." Technically, [Elliott Smith] is not the best-sounding thing. It's all self-recorded, basically, with a little bit of help from Tony Lash [Heatmiser drummer] and Leslie Uppinghouse. Leslie doesn't really get the proper credit. The record was tracked on 8-track, reel-to-reel, and then mixed. It started at Tony's with two songs and the rest in Leslie's spare room. Then it was taken back over to Tony's and mixed down through a pretty inexpensive Mackie console and a DAT machine, which if it's running well, pretty much what you put in is what you get back. But it's a little bit lossy, not the best sound quality. Tony assembled it, but he didn't really master it, apply much EQ, or do any limiting. He just kind of got the songs in the right levels and structured the album. Tony Lash is a fantastic guy and an amazing engineer and drummer. But back at that time when CDs first came out, especially for independent artists, it was really confusing what the mastering process was supposed to be. Finishing vinyl was a manufacturing process: you send the lacquer to a place that would make the negative, and then they would press the vinyl and you’d need to check it out to make sure it sounds right. With CDs, you’d basically send them a digital audio file and they’d make something. Small labels like this just weren't prepared for mastering CDs in a flattering way.

Gonson: I was just capturing what he was doing. It wasn't that I picked up the camera and he started goofing around. There’s a picture of him with the Mickey Mouse glasses, we were out with friends. I was just documenting the whole experience. The one where he's tuning his guitar in L.A. has been a really important photo in my life. That photo and then also the cover of Roman Candle are very popular. But that photo, it could be anybody sitting there tuning and I would still love that picture. The hair, the shape of the body—he really is listening. For years I saw that picture as a little bit dark and gloomy. But then a few years ago, I started seeing it as very positive because his body language is attentive, not depressed. And he's listening to this instrument. He loves the guitar and he's really in this moment of preparing. It just says, "I'm in a punk club getting ready to go on stage.”

I'm going to be really precocious at the moment, and I’m sure some people are going to be like, "I hate her," but one really big part of my reconciling sharing [my photos from that time] was that Elliott loved my photography. I took all of Heatmiser's promo photos and he used my pictures on the covers of two records, a single, and back covers. I feel that he would be okay with my showing my work because he really loved it. He made music and I made pictures, and that's why there are so many pictures...God, I hope he didn't write "Pictures of Me" about that. I don't think he did. I have given a lot of my memory, but the biggest thing about the photos really has to do with feeling like it was okay. And I actually did talk to his sister about it. She’s a dear friend, a wonderful human being, and a brilliant, amazing person.

"I want to make a thing that the people who love him want to have"

Crane: My role is to make sure everything's cataloged and stored properly and backed up digitally. And if any release or remaster is coming out, I supervise it and work on it. I'm not really a mastering engineer, so in cases like this I go through all the different sources and choose the best [recordings]. I went to different digital audio tapes it was mixed to and listened to them all back to back against each other. In some cases, even as these are digital tapes, they transferred differently and were recorded differently somehow. And you just have to find the one that sounds the clearest and the best. And then I would prep the files before mastering, cleaning up the subsonic information, removing tape hiss.

I always felt that it was a beautiful record, but that it sounded a little rough. If you really examine "Needle in the Hay," there were these huge low-end bumps, sub-sonic information on the master tapes. Tony and I have tried to figure out what it is, but it wasn't musical information. It was almost random sound. So being able to go in and surgically remove that with the tools that are available digitally opens up more room for the music to sound better. It takes away this incorrect information. Songs like "Satellite" were really buried in tape hiss at points. I would also clean up really loud guitar scrapes when he was going between chords or really popped P's or S's that were causing a bit of distortion. And then I would go attend sessions with Adam Gonsalves, who's the actual mastering engineer, and we'd spend a few days doing the mastering work as far as EQ'ing and limiting. We would go back and forth, listening to the original album, my raw files, and what he'd done and make little adjustments.

Gonson: Putting out a book is major, major, major for a photographer. I have been taking pictures since I was five, since I was old enough to point and think about what I'm doing. As much as that kid who picks up Rolling Stone magazine and wants to be a guitar player or a drummer, I read Aperture magazine and wanted to be a successful photographer. I shot punk rock and the second wave of hardcore from ‘85 to ‘90 in Boston and New York, so that could be another book. But this one is very much a gift to his fans from me and his label. When Portia [Sabin, Kill Rock Stars president] approached me about doing this project, she said, "I want to make a thing that the people who love him want to have." She was very clear that she wanted to make a beautiful thing and that it was going to be very special.

Crane: Every time you remaster or reapproach an album like this, some people just will not like any change whatsoever. So, some fans are going to say, "That's not what he intended. It just sounds louder and brighter," or something. Most people aren't really equipped to do incredibly deep, critical listening. Some people are going to say they don't like it as much, and to them I say: hang onto your original copy. But when a remaster of an album is done well, you open up just a little more detail and a little more depth. My goal is always to make it something where you're hearing a little bit more of what was intended. I studied filmmaking and I always equate it with a good transfer of a film, where you don't see the hairs caught in the frames, and there's not jumps where the reels change. You take all the garbage out that you don't need and clean it up so it's more emotionally involving. I hope that people will hear it and say, "It affected me more."

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I try to keep everything that you're used to hearing. There are noises at the beginning of "Coming Up Roses," a bunch of rustling. I wouldn't take that out. And I would certainly never auto-tune or pitch correct his lead vocals. You couldn't really slick up this record or do too much to it. We don’t have multitracks for half of the record. There's a missing reel somehow. It's one of the few cases where we just don't have the masters. I just try to present it in a similar way to the way he was mixing his stuff. I go with certain panning schemes and certain affects usage that made sense to the way Elliott worked. He wasn't someone who was super communicative all the time, but I watched him work on XO and he would just be matter of fact and move forward.

Gonson: The [book] designer I worked with was so talented that I very easily downloaded from my brain into his what my dream was of how this would look. He totally nailed it immediately. I went to a very conventional fine arts school as a really fringy person and learned that photography is called bottom weighted. It's not quite in the center of the page; it's a little bit to the top. It has a black line around it, and it's on a white page.

This work has never been seen, and I'm not just someone who happened to be on the spot with a quick camera. I'm a trained photographer and photojournalist. So some of them are candid, but they're still photography. They're not just what I call happy snaps—though those do still have a lot of merit. But these are very satisfying to me because they're actually portraits. I have thousands and thousands of pictures and these are the ones that I selected out to share. Editing is the bugbear of the artist. It's hard to know when to stop. Gratefully, I did a lot of critique in art school, and I was taught to have a discerning eye. So, I can go from 200 pictures down to 40 pretty easily. But it's that last 40 that are painful. In this case, there were very, very strict criteria: no photos of Heatmiser, and only pictures from a certain couple of years.

Photo by JJ Gonson

"That picture is a story...a portrait of 1994 in Portland"

Gonson: There are always my favorite pictures, a lot of which have never been seen. There are ones that I find the most dear, like the photo of Elliott with blue hair and he's doing the devil horns and he's holding a cup of coffee. That photo is that it is a portrait of 1994 in Portland, Oregon. That picture is a story. You've got the wet streets. The cars give you the time period. And then his growing out, faded, dyed blue hair and the ironic cat's eye glasses, the ironic jacket—it was all about being ironic, because it was grunge. I look at that picture and I'm like, "That's ‘93, ‘94 Portland, Oregon." Another one that I find very satisfying as a picture is of Elliott playing guitar with our friend, Chris. That tells another story that's very important: everybody sitting around, playing constantly. I think they're in front of a shower curtain that we were using to divide a room because somebody was sleeping in the other part of the room. It was a house full of 20-year-olds, whatever we were, post-college youngsters with bad jobs or no jobs.

The thing that was the most difficult was not being able to lay a bunch of pictures out together on a table. You really can't in this process. That makes it very hard to do the color balance, because they all have to be contiguous. You can't have one be shockingly blue, and the next one be suddenly shockingly yellow or your brain will just go, "This looks like shit." So they all have to be color balanced and the blacks and whites had to be adjusted to suit each other. And that's probably the thing that the designer, Rob Jones, and I spent the most time doing. I actually went to Portland so we were looking at the same screen and I was like, "A little bluer..." And then we scrolled through them really fast before taking a day off and coming back to it with fresh eyes. Making this book was like mixing a record—mastering, mixing, all of it.

"There’s a whole person there"

Crane: The live album that comes with it was very difficult. I'd drive around town, borrowing four-track cassette players from different people and doing different passes with noise reduction on and noise reduction off. The masters for the album were easier to deal with than this cassette recording because with an analog master, like these cassettes, you can keep messing with it and pulling more information out of the ether, out of the tape hiss. If you get a slightly better tape head or a tape player, maybe the tape player plays the tape more steadily and there's less flutter. Or maybe the different brands of four-track cassette recorders have slightly different gaps between the tracks on the heads, so they follow it differently. There are a million things, so that was frustrating as heck.

I feel we always end up saying, "There's a whole person there. There's a whole breadth of emotion, personality behind this music. Don't take it at a shallow base value." And I think when something like this live concert comes out, people are able to hear he was very casual with his shows. He would stop and start songs and chat with the audience. He would sound nervous to some people, but honestly, I don't really think he was. He was just up there, like, "What do you want?" It's a tiny venue. I remember seeing him play here once. It was a little coffee shop. The tiny crowd is probably sitting on the floor. You can hear Sean Croghan and Neil Gust and Joanna Bolme and a few of our other friends talking in the background. He plays "Half Right" with Neil, which had just been written. And we're lucky that Casey Crynes made this little live cassette. I wasn't there for this show, but I saw shows there later, so I know what the space felt. It's important to understand those things.

"Everyone knew that what he was doing was pretty damn good"

Crane: I'm pretty sure I met Elliott in ‘96 through Joanna Bolme. They were dating at the time and she worked at a venue called La Luna as a bartender. If you listen to "New Monkey," it actually refers to that. My friend was the bar manager there, so when I went to La Luna to see shows, I usually got on the guest list and they'd give me free beers. That's how I met Joanna and how Elliott ended up hanging out at our house.

Summer of ‘96, we talked at a party, and then I recorded the vocals on "Pictures of Me" for him at my house. I remember saying, "Do you really have to double everything? Do you have to put so many vocals on here?" He did six tracks of vocals. I was kinda like, "That seems excessive, but this reminds me of the Left Banke." And he goes, "You like the Left Banke?" It sparked this conversation where we discovered we both liked a lot of the same stuff, more nuanced, older music and Baroque pop. In the winter of ‘96/’97, we went and found a space and opened up Jackpot. But when he was recording Either/Or, he did a lot of the recording at JJ's office space. I was working at a record distributor that was on the other side of the wall from where he was playing drums. We'd hear Elliott in there banging around and we knew he was making a new record. And then when we opened the studio, we spent weeks building the walls and wiring things up. It was my business, but I told him if he wanted to bring gear down and help me build the studio, he could work out of here for a small fee. It was really fun building the studio with him. We'd listened to CDs all day, lots of Beatles, Zombies, and the Kinks. There was always Dylan hovering in the background. I think I tortured him with Petula Clark one time. He went out one day and came back with a CD of Pat Boone's In a Metal Mood. It's pretty hilarious. Not really something you want to listen to.

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I was not putting Elliott on any sort of pedestal at that point, just because he was in our friend group. Everyone knew that what he was doing was pretty damn good. But at the same time, everybody was falling all over themselves about Everclear and the Dandy Warhols. The Dandy Warhols are fun, but it's just lightweight, fluff music. And Everclear are just flat-out shitty. It's an old guy writing songs for teenagers. It's bullshit music. It's as bad as listening to Foreigner or something.

"It's my life"

Gonson: I didn't listen to his music at all [while making the book]. I don't need to. I watched it being written. I think he's brilliant, but I don't necessarily dig back into old favorites and that's what that would be. I don't need to be triggered into that. It's my life.

Crane: If you went to my mom and gave her a two-inch reel of my old band or something, she'd go, "What do I have to do with that?" I remember in the middle of working on New Moon, I met with Elliott’s dad, Gary, and he goes, "I got this box of stuff. Do you want to look at it?" And there was a whole bunch of digital audio tapes. We put it in the archive, but I don't think he even quite knew what they were. He was like, "Are these something?" I'm like, "Oh, majorly. Yes. But we need to get those backed up now." I'm really honored that they trust me and it really helps to be in a position to help them. I'm in a wonderful position because I know Rob Schnapf and Joanna [Bolme] and most of the guys that were in Heatmiser. I'm still in touch with Neil [Gust]. I can drop a line to anybody and say, "Hey, I've got a question" and they're happy to talk to me about it. They trust me. If I was some stranger that was just hired because he had the technical expertise, they might be nervous about this person. We can all confer and make sure that things feel okay.

How Blind Melon Lost Their Minds & Made A Masterpiece: 'Soup' Turns 25

Three months after OneRepublic began promoting their sixth album, Artificial Paradise, in February 2022, the band unexpectedly had their biggest release in nearly a decade. The pop-rock band's carefree jam, "I Ain't Worried," soundtracked Top Gun: Maverick's most memeable scene and quickly became a global smash — ultimately delaying album plans in favor of promoting their latest hit.

Two years later, "I Ain't Worried" is one of 16 tracks on Artificial Paradise, which arrived July 12. It's a seamless blend of songs that will resonate with longtime and newer fans alike. From the layered production of "Hurt," to the feel-good vibes of "Serotonin," to the evocative lyrics of "Last Holiday," Artificial Paradise shows that OneRepublic's sound is as dialed-in as it is ever-evolving.

The album also marks the end of an era for OneRepublic, as it's the last in their contract with Interscope Records. But for the group's singer, Ryan Tedder, that means the future is even more exciting than it's been in their entire 15-year career.

"I've never been more motivated to write the best material of my life than this very moment," he asserts. "I'm taking it as a challenge. We've had a lot of fun, and a lot of uplifting records for the last seven or eight years, but I also want to tap back into some deeper material with the band."

As he's been prepping Artificial Paradise with his OneRepublic cohorts, Tedder has also been as busy as he's ever been working with other artists. His career as a songwriter/producer took off almost simultaneously with OneRepublic's 2007 breakthrough, "Apologize" (his first major behind-the-board hit was Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love"); to this day he's one of the go-to guys for pop's biggest names, from BLACKPINK to Tate McRae.

Tedder sat down with GRAMMY.com to share some of his most prominent memories of OneRepublic's biggest songs, as well as some of the hits he's written with Beyoncé, Adele, Taylor Swift and more.

I was producing and writing other songs for different artists on Epic and Atlantic — I was just cutting my teeth as a songwriter in L.A. This is like 2004. I was at my lowest mentally and financially. I was completely broke. Creditors chasing me, literally dodging the taxman and getting my car repoed, everything.

I had that song in my back pocket for four years. A buddy of mine just reminded me last month, a songwriter from Nashville — Ashley Gorley, actually. We had a session last month, me, him and Amy Allen, and he brought it up. He was like, "Is it true, the story about 'Apologize'? You were completely broke living in L.A. and Epic Records offered you like 100 grand or something just for the right to record the song on one of their artists?"

And that is true. It was, like, 20 [grand], then 50, then 100. And I was salivating. I was, like, I need this money so bad. And I give so many songs to other people, but with that song, I drew a line in the sand and said, "No one will sing this song but me. I will die with this song." 

It was my story, and I just didn't want anyone else to sing it. It was really that simple. It was a song about my past relationships, it was deeply personal. And it was also the song that — I spent two years trying to figure out what my sound was gonna be. I was a solo artist… and I wasn't landing on anything compelling. Then I landed on "Apologize" and a couple of other songs, and I was like, These songs make me think of a band, not solo artist material. So it was the song that led me to the sound of OneRepublic, and it also led me to the idea that I should start a band and not be a solo artist.

We do it every night. I'll never not do it. I've never gotten sick of it once. Every night that we do it, whether I'm in Houston or Hong Kong, I look out at the crowd and look at the band, and I'm like, Wow. This is the song that got us here.

We were halfway through promoting Dreaming Out Loud, our first album. I played basketball every day on tour, and I snapped my Achilles. The tour got canceled. The doctor told me not to even write. And I had this one sliver of an afternoon where my wife had to run an errand. And because I'm sadistic and crazy, I texted [songwriter] Evan Bogart, "I got a three-hour window, race over here. Beyoncé called me and asked me to write her a song. I want to do it with you." He had just come off his huge Rihanna No. 1, and we had an Ashley Tisdale single together.

When you write enough songs, not every day do the clouds part and God looks down on you and goes, "Here." But that's what happened on that day. I turn on the keyboard, the first sound that I play is the opening sound of the song. Sounds like angels singing. And we wrote the song pretty quick, as I recall. 

I didn't get a response [from Beyoncé after sending "Halo" over], which I've now learned is very, very typical of her. I did Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé "II MOST WANTED" [from COWBOY CARTER] — I didn't know that was coming out 'til five days before it came out. And when I did "XO" [from 2013's Beyoncé], I found out that "XO" was coming out 12 hours before it came out. That's how she operates.

["Good Life"] was kind of a Hail Mary. We already knew that "All the Right Moves" would be the first single [from Waking Up]. We knew that "Secrets" was the second single. And in the 11th hour, our engineer at the time — who I ended up signing as a songwriter, Noel Zancanella — had this drum loop that he had made, and he played it for Brent [Kutzle] in our band. Brent said, "You gotta hear this drum loop that Noel made. It's incredible."

He played it for me the next morning, and I was like, "Yo throw some chords to this. I'm writing to this today." They threw some chords down, and the first thing out of my mouth was, [sings] "Oh, this has gotta be the good life." 

It's the perfect example of, oftentimes, the chord I've tried to strike with this band with some of our bigger records, [which] is happy sad. Where you feel nostalgic and kind of melancholic, but at the same time, euphoric. That's what those chords and that melody did for me.

I was like, "Hey guys, would it be weird if I made the hook a whistle?" And everyone was like, "No! Do not whistle!" They're like, "Name the last hit song that had a whistle." And the only one I could think of was, like, Scorpion from like, 1988. [Laughs.] So I thought, To hell with it, man, it's been long enough, who cares? Let's try it. And the whistle kind of made the record. It became such a signature thing.

Adele — "Rumour Has It," '21' (2011)

"Rumour Has It" was the first song I did in probably a four year period, with any artist, that wasn't a ballad. All any artist ever wanted me to write with them or for them, was ballads, because of "Halo," and "Apologize" and "Bleeding Love."

I begged [Adele] to do a [song with] tempo, because we did "Turning Tables," another ballad. She was in a feisty mood [that day], so I was like, "Okay, we're doing a tempo today!"

Rick Rubin was originally producing the whole album. I was determined to produce Adele, not just write — because I wanted a shot to show her that I could, and to show myself. I stayed later after she left, and I remember thinking, What can I do in this record in this song that could be so difficult to reproduce that it might land me the gig?

So I intentionally muted the click track, changed the tempo, and [created that] whole piano bridge. I was making it up as I went. When she got in that morning. I said, "I have a crazy idea for a bridge. It's a movie." She listens and she says, "This is really different, I like this! How do we write to this?" 

I mean, it was very difficult. [But] we finished the song. She recorded the entire song that day. She recorded the whole song in one take. I've never seen anyone do that in my life — before or since.

Then I didn't hear from her for six months. Because I handed over the files, and Rick Rubin's doing it, so I don't need to check on it. I randomly check on the status of the song — and at this point, if you're a songwriter or producer, you're assuming that they're not keeping the songs. Her manager emails my manager, "Hey, good news — she's keeping both songs they did, and she wants Ryan to finish 'Rumour Has It' production and mix it." 

When I finally asked her, months later — probably at the GRAMMYs — I said, "Why didn't [Rick] do it?" She said, "Oh he did. It's that damn bridge! Nobody could figure out what the hell you were doing…It was so problematic that we just gave up on it."

I was in a Beyoncé camp in the Hamptons writing for the self-titled album. [There were] a bunch of people in the house — me, Greg Kurstin, Sia — it was a fun group of people. I had four days there, and every morning I'd get up an hour and a half before I had to leave, make a coffee, and start prepping for the day. On the third day, I got up, I'm in the basement of this house at like 7 in the morning, and I'm coming up with ideas. I stumble across that chord progression, the guitar and the melody. It was instant shivers up my spine. 

"Lately I've been losing sleep, dreaming about the things that we could be" is the only line that I had. [My] first thought was, I should play this for Beyoncé, and then I'm listening to it and going, This is not Beyoncé, not even remotely. It'd be a waste. So I tabled it, and I texted the guys in my band, "Hey, I think I have a potentially really big record. I'm going to finish it when I get back to Denver."

I got back the next week, started recording it, did four or five versions of the chorus, bouncing all the versions off my wife, and then eventually landed it. And when I played it for the band, they were like, "This is our favorite song."

It was my second session with Taylor. The first one was [1989's] "I Know Places," and she sent me a voice memo. I was looking for a house in Venice [California], because we were spending so much time in L.A. So that whole memory is attached to me migrating back to Los Angeles. 

But I knew what she was talking about, because I lived in New York, and I remember the feeling — endless possibilities, all the different people and races and sexes and loves. That was her New York chapter. She was so excited to be there. If you never lived there, and especially if you get there and you've got a little money in the pocket, it is so exhilarating.

It was me just kind of witnessing her brilliant, fast-paced, lyrical wizardry. [Co-producer] Max [Martin] and I had a conversation nine months later at the GRAMMYs, when we had literally just won for 1989. He kind of laughed, he pointed to all the other producers on the album, and he's like, "If she had, like, three more hours in the day, she would just figure out what we do and she would do it. And she wouldn't need any of us." 

And I still think that's true. Some people are just forces of nature in and among themselves, and she's one of them. She just blew me away. She's the most talented top liner I've ever been in a room with, bar none. If you're talking lyric and melody, I've never been in a room with anyone faster, more adept, knows more what they want to say, focused, efficient, and just talented.

I had gone through a pretty dry spell mentally, emotionally. I had just burned it at both ends and tapped out, call it end of 2016. So, really, all of 2017 for me was a blur and a wash. I did a bunch of sessions in the first three months of the year, and then I just couldn't get a song out. I kept having, song after song, artists telling me it's the first single, [then] the song was not even on the album. I had never experienced that in my career.

I went six to nine months without finishing a song, which for me is unheard of. Andrew Watt kind of roped me back into working with him. We did "Easier" for 5 Seconds of Summer, and we did some Sam Smith and some Miley Cyrus, and right in that same window, I did this song "Sucker." Two [or] three months later, Wendy Goldstein from Republic [Records] heard the record, I had sent it to her. She'd said, very quietly, "We're relaunching the Jonas Brothers. They want you to be involved in a major way. Do you have anything?" 

She calls me, she goes, "Ryan, do not play this for anybody else. This is their comeback single. It's a No. 1 record. Watch what we're gonna do." And she delivered.

My memory is, being in lockdown in COVID, and just being like, Who knows when this is going to end, working out of my Airstream at my house. I had done a lot of songs for movies over the years, and [for] that particular [song] Randy Spendlove, who runs [music at] Paramount, called me.

I end up Zooming with Tom Cruise [and Top Gun: Maverick director] Jerry Bruckheimer — everybody's in lockdown during post-production. The overarching memory was, Holy cow, I'm doing the scene, I'm doing the song for Top Gun. I can't believe this is happening. But the only way I knew how to approach it, rather than to, like, overreact and s— the bed, was, It's just another day.

I do prescription songs for movies, TV, film all the time. I love a brief. It's so antithetical to most writers. I'm either uncontrollably lazy or the most productive person you've ever met. And the dividing line between the two is, if I'm chasing some directive, some motivation, some endpoint, then I can be wildly productive.

I just thought, I'm going to do the absolute best thing I can do for this scene and serve the film. OneRepublic being the performing artist was not on the menu in my mind. I just told them, "I think you need a cool indie band sounding, like, breakbeat." I used adjectives to describe what I heard when I saw the scene, and Tom got really ramped and excited. 

You could argue [it's the biggest song] since the band started. The thing about it is, it's kind of become one of those every summer [hits]. And when it blew up, that's what Tom said. He said, "Mark my words, dude. You're gonna have a hit with this every summer for, like, the next 20 years or more." 

And that's what happened. The moment Memorial Day happened, "I Ain't Worried" got defrosted and marched itself back into the top 100.

Tate McRae — "Greedy," 'THINK LATER' (2023)

We had "10:35" [with Tiësto] the previous year that had been, like, a No. 1 in the UK and across Europe and Australia. So we were coming off the back of that, and the one thing she was clear about was, "That is not the direction of what I want to do."

If my memory serves me correct, "greedy" was the next to last session we had. Everything we had done up to that point was kind of dark, midtempo, emotional. So "greedy" was the weirdo outlier. I kept pushing her to do a dance record. I was like, "Tate, there's a lot of people that have great voices, and there's a lot of people who can write, but none of those people are professional dancers like you are. Your secret weapon is the thing you're not using. In this game and this career, you've got to use every asset that you have and exploit it."

There was a lot of cajoling. On that day, we did it, and I thought it was badass, and loved it. And she was like, "Ugh, what do we just do? What is this?"

So then it was just, like, months, months and months of me constantly bringing that song back up, and playing it for her, and annoying the s— out of her. And she came around on it. 

She has very specific taste. So much of the music with Tate, it really is her steering. I'll do what I think is like a finished version of a song, and then she will push everyone for weeks, if not months, to extract every ounce of everything out of them, to push the song harder, further, edgier — 19 versions of a song, until finally she goes, "Okay, this is the one." She's a perfectionist.

I love [our latest single] "Hurt," but my favorite song on the album is called "Last Holiday." I probably started the beginning of that lyric, I'm not joking, seven, eight years ago. But I didn't finish it 'til this past year.

The verses are little maxims and words of advice that I've been given throughout the years. It's almost cynical in a way, the song. When I wrote the chorus, I was definitely in kind of a down place. So the opening line is, "So I don't believe in the stars anymore/ They never gave me what I wished for." And it's, obviously, a very not-so-slight reference to "Counting Stars." But it's also hopeful — "We've got some problems, okay, but this isn't our last holiday." 

It's very simple sentiments. Press pause. Take some moments. Find God before it all ends. All these things with this big, soaring chorus. Musically and emotionally and sonically, that song — and "Hurt," for sure — but "Last Holiday" is extremely us-sounding. 

The biggest enemy that we've had over the course of 18 years, I'll be the first to volunteer, is, this ever-evolving, undulating sound. No one's gonna accuse me of making these super complex concept albums, because that's just not how my brain's wired. I grew up listening to the radio. I didn't grow up hanging out in the Bowery in CBGBs listening to Nick Cave. So for us, the downside to that, and for me doing all these songs for all these other people, is the constant push and pull of "What is their sound? What genre is it?" 

I couldn't put a pin in exactly what the sound is, but what I would say is, if you look at the last 18 years, a song like "Last Holiday" really encompasses, sonically, what this band is about. It's very moving, and emotional, and dynamic. It takes me to a place — that's the best way for me to put it. And hopefully the listener finds the same.