He might be known these days as a songwriter, producer and for the likes of Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo, but Dan Nigro actually cut his music industry teeth as lead singer and guitarist in a band, As Tall As Lions. And, despite the fact that it now seems to be solo artists having all the success, he feels like that the era of the group might yet come again.
“I think there is a world for bands to see some big chart success,” he told Rolling Stone. “I can’t name you a specific band at the moment, but I feel like the way things cycle, there’s going to come a time where the world is ready for it.”
This may well come to pass, but the cold truth is that bands are currently struggling to break through, and Nigro has a theory as to why that is.
“Because we have computers now, it’s harder for bands to form,” he argues. “When I was 16 or 17, the only way to make music was to get together with a drummer and a bass player. Whereas kids today can go, ‘Oh, I want to make a song and I want to make it sound good. I don’t need other people to do that.’ People are just less inclined in general to get together to make music, cause you don’t have to, and therefore it just makes [fewer] bands happen.”
The logic here is sound, but what’s also undeniable is that band recordings frequently have more life and energy than songs that have been assembled piece by piece in a DAW. And, according to Nigro, it took a solo artist - Olivia Rodrigo - to remind him of this when she was recording a couple of songs for her 2023 album, Guts.
“All American Bitch and Ballad of a Homeschool Girl - tracks one and five,” he says. “She loved the feeling of her band live and the way the songs felt when she went on tour and how raw it felt. She was really great at teaching me, because we have these imaginary rules of “that’s not how music is made today.” She was like, ‘I want it to feel really raw and live and the tempos to fluctuate.’ I’m like, ‘OK, I know exactly how to do that.’”
In these cases, live recordings were the way to go, but - just to illustrate that there are lots of ways to skin the music production cat - Nigro also points out Good 4 U, another of Rodrigo’s rockier tunes, this one from her debut album, Sour, was made almost completely within the computer.
“I think people are surprised that song was completely made in the box,” he says, before clarifying that “Actually, there’s one instrument that was recorded live - the hi-hat. We felt like with that song, we needed to give it some element that actually made it feel like only a drummer could play this. We brought the hi-hat in and worked on all the hi-hat patterns to make it sound like a live drummer.”
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