often things work that you didn’t think would be a good fit. ‘Irreplaceable’, for instance, was not written for Beyoncé. Everybody thought that it didn’t fit in the R&B genre and that it was too different to be played on the radio. Even after Beyoncé recorded it, people still thought the radio stations wouldn’t play it. And then suddenly everybody was playing it. A good song is a good song, no matter how you wrap it.
"We will often try left-field ideas that we later adapt. We constantly search for different sounds and different inspirations. You don't want to be stuck in one lane and just to repeat versions of your last hit record. We tend to play and program all parts on our songs ourselves, but sometimes the guitars are done by Espen Lind and Amund Bjørklund, who are a Norwegian writing and production team called Espionage. They are great songwriters and they had the guitar idea for Beyonce's 'Irreplaceable' and also for some of our other songs,
Mikkel Eriksen tells the stories behind some of the Norwegian duo’s greatest hits.
‘Beautiful Liar’ (2007)
Artists: Shakira and Beyoncé.
Writers: Mikkel Eriksen, Tor Hermansen, Amanda Ghost, Ian Dench, Beyoncé Knowles.
“This song is very simple. Most of the time we have more chords in a song, because we find it hard writing a great song on just one chord. But if you do it right, you can make it work, and this song is an example. We had written the backing track a year earlier, and played it to one of our managers, TyTy [Tyran Smith], who loved the track and said that it’d be perfect for a duet between Shakira and Beyoncé. We were like, ‘Yeah, right!’ and laughing and shaking our heads and thinking it could not be done. But he was really devoted to that idea. We didn’t have a lyric or a top melody, so various writers had a stab at finishing the song. The first two or three attempts weren’t good enough, and then he had the idea of putting us together with Amanda and Ian, who we hadn’t heard of, and they wrote the lyric and the melody. It originally had a Spanish title and different lyrics, but then Tor said, ‘You have that line “beautiful liar” in one of the verses. Why not use that as a feature?’ So that became the punchline. We presented it to Beyoncé, who loved it and added her own twist to the lyrics and then recorded a version of it, but they could not get Shakira to feature on the song in time for the release of B’Day. A few months later, Shakira agreed to sing on the track, and she recorded the vocal and her people also added the ethnic strings and percussion break. The song became a huge hit around the world and is now included on the new version of B’Day. It illustrates for us the importance of having dedicated people around who believe in your ideas and your music and push it forward to make it happen, and we’ve had a lot of support from our management team, TyTy, Tim Blacksmith, Danny D and Jay Brown.”
‘Irreplaceable’ (2006)
Artist: Beyoncé.
Writers: Shaffer ‘Ne-Yo’ Smith, Mikkel Eriksen, Tor Hermansen, Espen Lind, Amund Bj rklund, Beyoncé Knowles.
“This song began with some guitar chords that were given to us by Amund and Espen, and we arranged them and added bass and drums and strings and melodies and everything else. The chords were leaning towards country, so we had fun exploring something new. Ne-Yo is also not locked into one genre, and when we presented the song to him, he wrote lyrics to it and added a melody, and magic happened. It was actually an A&R person who suggested that the song would work better when sung by a female. A couple of labels wanted the song, but for a while nothing happened, until Beyoncé heard it. She loved it and recorded it, but it didn’t seem to fit on the album she was doing at the time, B’Day, which was supposed to be a hard-hitting club album. Finally, one of the producers on the album, Swizz Beats, said that she’d be crazy not to include the song on the album. It was released on the album as track number nine, and then spent 10 weeks on number one as a single, and in the new edition of the album it’s the second song, immediately after ‘Beautiful Liar’.”
‘Broken-hearted Girl’ (2009)
Artist: Beyoncé.
Writers: Beyoncé Knowles, Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, Stargate.
“Originally this was a classic, full R&B track, that we wrote with Babyface. He came in and changed one chord and wrote the lyrics and then he added a falsetto voice that we recorded as a demo. From there we proceeded to change the entire backing track around his vocal. We changed the chords, everything, and this is where that four to the floor piano emerged. The song is in D-minor. I suppose many of our songs are in minor keys. We probably lean towards more a moody, melodic expression. It’s what comes most natural for us.”
‘I Am’ (2010)
2010.May
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may10/articles/stargate.htm-------------------------------------------------------
We focused on the sound when we did it, and
when we wrote it with Ne-Yo it was done first with a male vocal, and we thought, 'This is more of a female vocal part,' " Hermansen said. "We liked it and so did Ne-Yo, but he said, 'Who will cut this?' "
The tune was not specifically written for Beyoncé — in fact, Ne-Yo wrote it from a male perspective — and Hermansen said that had they been writing for the former Destiny's Child leader, they might not have gone in the direction they did. The sound just wasn't one they associated with her voice. Ne-Yo has said in interviews that he had Faith Hill and Shania Twain in mind when he wrote "Irreplaceable" as a country song, and Hermansen still thinks the tune could easily have been a country radio hit.
But once Beyonce heard it, she loved it and was sure she could make it her own. "What happens sometimes, is you think about a specific artist and you put them in this box, the song has to be this way or that, and then you're usually confining yourself to the thing they did three years ago," Hermansen said. "But she heard it and did her own vocal arrangements, asked for a few changes to be made and some new drums, and she sang it much higher than the demo."
Once the sessions wrapped for "Irreplaceable," Hermansen said everyone felt they had captured something special and that Beyoncé had done the track justice, but there were still concerns that urban radio might not play the song because it featured acoustic guitars and was too pop. "But then it became the biggest urban record ... ever," he said.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1580808/20080201/id_0.jhtml
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The Norwegian Daily Dagbladet reports that the two perhaps biggest stars on the firmament of female pop, Beyonce Knowles and Shakira have joined forces on a new version of a song written by the Norwegian prodigy producers Stargate. Originally recorded by Beyonce for her 2006 album B’Day during the "Irreplaceable sessions" (the number one hit written and produced by the Norwegians and their collaborators) “Beautiful Liar” has been re-recorded, and this time as a duo with Shakira.
“Beyonce sent us a new version of the song,” says Tom Erik Hermansen and Mikkel S. Eriksen of Stargate, “and it sounds fabulous”.
http://stargatestudios.org/index.php/hva-er-nytt-i-1-5/58-stargate-the-series-continue
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