Benny Blanco is one of the 21st century's most successful producers and songwriters, having sat behind the boards for chart-topping hits from Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey, among others.
One might assume, given his track record, that Blanco knows his way around a DAW or two. As it turns out, though, the Virginia-born producer spent much of the early part of his career blissfully unaware of some rather fundamental functionality in his music-making software of choice - and astonishingly, it was precisely this lack of know-how that ended up shaping the sound of several internationally successful hits.
Blanco appeared on content creator Daniel Wall's channel recently to break down early demos of several tracks from his discography, including Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger and Rihanna's Diamonds. During the interview, he reveals that early on in his music-making career, he hadn't yet figured out that it was possible to change a project's tempo in Pro Tools. As a result, most of his early songs were recorded at the software's default tempo of 120bpm.
"All my first big songs are 120bpm, because I didn't even know you could change the tempo"
"All my first big songs are 120bpm, because I didn't even know you could change the tempo," Blanco tells Wall. "The default tempo when you go to Pro Tools is 120.... I didn't know you could change the tempo, so I just made all my songs at 120." Taking a glance at some early selections from Blanco's discography, we can see that several hugely successful tracks the producer worked on towards the end of the '00s - Kesha's Tik Tok, Katy Perry's Teenage Dream and Taio Cruz's Dynamite - are all at 120bpm.
While it's surprising that someone operating at Blanco's level could fail to grasp such an essential function of his DAW, as Wall points out, perhaps Blanco's inexperience worked in his favour. After all, each one of those songs topped charts in both the US and UK, placing Blanco on the path to becoming one of the decade's biggest hitmakers. Who are we to judge?
Blanco recently released a collaborative album with his partner Selena Gomez. I Said I Love You First features guest appearances from Gracie Abrams, Tainy and J Balvin, and co-writing credits from Charli XCX, FINNEAS, and Dylan Brady.
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