風無止盡

 
Hello Nick!
Whazzzup!

Here he is! How are you?
(Ludicrous Dick Van Dyke-style approximation of English accent) ‘Hello!’ (Chuckles at length)

Do people actually still say ‘whazzzup’?
I don’t know, but I still say it. I need to get a little more current, huh?

Perhaps it’s good to bring these phrases back, because bands have revivals. Perhaps it makes perfect sense for catchphrases from the late 90s to make comebacks.
What do people say instead, though? If not ‘whazzzup’? That’s the question.

‘Hello’. But that prompted you to say it back in an English accent, taking the piss. It’s impossible to win.
‘HAHLOW’.

Yes exactly, well done. Where are you?
I’m in Los Angeles.

Are you just basically sitting in a room doing an entire day of phone interviews?
Pretty much.

That sounds like great fun Nick, that must be a great pleasure for you.
It’s a lot of fun.

No it’s not. So anyway you’ve a new album. And a new single! Produced by RedOne! Unbelievable scenes.
Yeah, it was great. It was great working with RedOne, him being from Sweden, there were good vibes from the past everywhere.

‘The past’ being a handful of different tunesmiths from Sweden.
Yeah, I mean RedOne was actually kind of like a big fan of us at the beginning, and always wanted to be on our album. It was really cool, it was just funny how time goes by when certain people rise to the occasion, and it’s their time to shine. It’s just funny how life works.

It works like that with producers but also with artists – you see people coming up and then going down, then moving in and moving out of shot.
It’s really cool. Who’s to think that a boyband can last?

Well Backstreet aren’t really a boyband any more, are you – there was a point when you went beyond being a boyband, and just became a thing that was there. In the same way that your initial idea of a band’s name fades with time as you get used to it, so you find that bands, if they stay around long enough sometimes shed their original skins and just become accepted as just being there.
Yeah. I think that’s what kind of happens. I love bad names and good bands. You could totally change someone’s perspective just based on music. It could be cool - you could be like ‘oh they’re really cool, we like them’ or ‘we didn’t like them at first because of what their name was’. It’s funny, music is one of those things on this planet that has free rein to change anything.

Well music can make you sad then make you cry, for example.
Exactly. I think music needs more credit as medication. They were doing studies on that recently. They’re trying to use it even more for healing purposes.

If you were a doctor and someone came to you and said ‘I’ve got an embarrassing rash’, which song on your new album would you prescribe to sort out the embarrassing rash?
I wouldn’t choose any song on our album, but I would play Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’. I tend to feel that that song was not written about a love story.

Is there a good cryable ballad on the new Backstreet album?
Yeah, there is. We went a little more ‘dance’ on this album, although we do have a few really great ballads and love songs.

Obviously, each Backstreet Boys album has to have its defining ballad, whether it’s kind of ‘Climbing The Walls’ , or ‘Drowning’ or whatever. What’s the big ballad on this album?
To be honest with you, we’re still in the middle of picking the songs, but there is a song that’s called ‘Shattered’. It’s touching, it’s very similar to ‘Drowning’ and all those other songs.

It sounds like quite an aggressive metaphor. You’re big on those. ‘Drowning’ - you’re drowning. ‘Shot straight through the heart’ - that’s obviously quite painful. ‘Shattered’ – ouch. Love hurts, Nick.
It’s typical, you know. We’re relishing love songs, I don’t know how it happens. At least we’re not doing the ‘Unforgivables’ and ‘Unbreakables’ and ‘Inconsolables’ and the ‘-bles’ anymore. We’re over that stage.

Are there no ‘-ables’?
There are no ‘-bles’ anymore.

You said that the general feel of the album is more upbeat this time. Has Red One been working across the whole album, or have you been working with different people?
He wrote three songs for us. He just delivered amazing songs that we thought were great and current and fresh. You know what’s funny though? Even though he’s worked with Gaga and all these big artists, he was such a big fan of the Backstreet Boys… He really tried in the very beginning, when he started to write songs that could go on our album. He studied us, and tried to write songs for us.

That must make a big difference for you, because one of the problems with someone like him who’s extremely hot in a ‘hot right now’ sense is that they will turn in songs that, really, sound like they might have just been knocking around in a drawer for five years.
I went after Red - me, personally. I got hold of him through Akon’s camp. We were like, ‘okay, we want to work with Akon’. They were like, Akon’s really busy, maybe you could work with RedOne, and I started listening to his stuff, and the Lady Gaga record, and then I went after him. I was like ‘dude, you GOTTA do this album, come on, please please please’. You know, begging him. He said ‘yeah sure, but I need to figure it out first, I need some time’. I sat back and thought ‘this guy doesn’t want to work with us’. But then, after getting into it a little more, he came back and said ‘dude, I just needed some time, because I wanted to come with the right Backstreet Boys record. I was such a fan of your music that I wanted to make sure it was truly who you were’. And he did that.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s great when people - quite early on in their career usually – still really care about stuff.
I think that’s what’s good about this situation is that we have to make music that sounds like us. We’ve put ourselves in a little bit of a hole where people don’t really want to listen to us unless it sounds familiar.

So they want the Greatest Hits, but you want to continue making new music, don’t you? You need to sort of move on while staying the same. Does getting involved with the writing help makes sense of that?
Well, we wrote some stuff with T-Pain - ‘International’ - which is a really pop song, but it’s really cool, I like that song. And he did another song for us, what’s it called… (Sings and mumbles) Yes - ‘She Can Dream’. I like that song, but I don’t know if it will make it on the album. I had a lot of the influence on this album. What I did was that I went out and pursued producers who would help us get back to the top again. One of those producers was Jim Jonsin. Jim Jonsin was a little bit more an R&B/hip-hop producer, but he crossed over. He’s really well known in the hip-hop world - he worked with Lil’ Wayne and TI. He did ‘Whatever You Like’ for TI, he did Little Wayne’s ‘Lollipop’. A lot of stuff that really worked good over here. And there was another guy named Jordan Omley who we worked with as well in the very beginning on a song with Ryan Tedder called ‘Undone’. So we did a song with Ryan Tedder on this album as well. One song is called ‘Helpless’, featuring Pitbull. It’s a pop-dancey song, but it’s really fun. And then we did some other songs like ‘Don’t Try This at Home’, and then there’s ‘I’m Without You’ which is a great song as well.  But then at the very end, a really really special song that I think probably looks like it’ll be the second single. After everything’s said and done, this song will be our new ‘I Want It That Way’.

Amazing.
It’s called ‘This is Us’. It’s the name of the album. When we were playing the song, Wyclef had come into the studio, and he was sitting there, and he sat back in his chair and threw his hands up in the air, and he said - ‘this is going to change music!’

To get this straight, he said, ‘this is going to change music’?
That’s what he said. He said ‘you guys did it!’.

It’s interesting that you still seem so hungry for success. This is your seventh studio album now, and you had your solo album as well, you’re almost 30… A lot of people would just be going ‘it’ll sell alright, I don’t want it to be massive, I just want to carry on doing it for another couple of years, tour again, make a load more money’. But it seems you’ve got a real hunger for surprising people and having a massive success with it as well.
I set very high goals, from a careerist standpoint, and also from an individual standpoint. I’ve changed myself as a human being, in the things that I do, and the lifestyle I lead, and physical appearance. I just want to be the best that I can be, in all positions and areas.

And, sorry to dwell on this, did Wyclef really say that one of your new songs would ‘change music’?
Well, yeah, he did. He said ‘this is the kind of song that changes music’.

‘Thriller’ literally changed music. In that maintream pop music before ‘Thriller’ is different to mainstream pop music after ‘Thriller’. It changed pop music, and it changed urban music - it changed the whole lot. Do you think this will change music in a similar way?
I don’t know. I think that all we can do is to continually struggle to be the best that we can be. If it happens, it happens and it changes things. We used to do that in the past. What  we represent as far as pop music goes, it’s like the purest type of music. Love music, pop music, no curse words, stuff you can dance to, stuff you can cry to. I think that music like that is on the radio again but to contribute and be at the epitome of that- it’s fun to be part of it again.

Just to pick you up on that, actually - you said that your music has no curse words in it, but one of your songs is called ‘Shattered’, and that has the word ‘shat’ in it - past tense for ‘shit’.
Hahaha, yes, yes it does. I apologise if anybody is offended.

source kaos online

 

你好,Nick!
嗨----!

嘿!你來了!一切都還好吧?
(用近似Ludicrous Dick Van Dyke式英國腔的發音)"你好!"(Nick在偷笑)

人們真的還一直在用"嗨----"打招呼?
不知道,但我還在這樣說.我是不是應該更跟得上潮流一點?

可能這些詞還是復古一點會比較好.因為組合有複出演唱會,用一個從90年代就開始使用的口頭禪會讓歌迷感到很親切.
那麼,如果不用"嗨----",又該用什麼代替呢?好奇怪啊....

"你好",但你用英國腔說的時候,注意別說成"呸",那樣很不好.
"你好"(大聲地)

嗯,很好.你現在在哪兒?
我在洛杉磯.

你一整天都老老實實地坐在屋子裏接受電話採訪?
是啊,採訪太多了.

Nick,這聽起來很好玩兒呢.這樣一定會使你很開心.
嗯.這非常有意思.

我不這麼覺得.無論如何,你們有了一張新專輯.還有一支新單曲!由RedOne製作的!這太令人難以置信了.
是啊,這確實很棒,和RedOne在一起工作的感覺很好,他是從瑞典來的,過去瑞典有很多很厲害的製作人.

"過去"只有少數不同風格的瑞典作曲家.
是的,我的意思是RedOne貌似一開始就是我們的超級粉絲,而且一直很想參與我們的專輯製作.這很棒.好笑的是,隨著時間的流逝,某些人開始出名了,現在正是他們閃閃發光的時候.人生有時候真的讓人覺得可笑.

你們似乎就是在製作人與音樂人的包圍中成長起來的----你親眼見過了有些人的崛起與衰落,進入和退出人們所關注的範圍.
這很有意思.誰能想到一個男子組合可以存活這麼久?

嗯.新好不再是一個男子組合了.你們已經越過了男子組合的界限,躍居於它之上.同樣地,你們對於組合名稱的最初的抵觸,也已隨時間的流逝而消失.你們已經完全習慣它了.所以你可以發現,如果一個樂隊存活的時間夠長,他們就會脫胎換骨,作為一個新的樂隊為人們所接受.
嗯.我想這就是發生在我們身上的事.我喜歡不好的名字+好的組合.你可以通過音樂完全改變一個人的想法.這很不錯----你可能會說"他們真的很棒.我們很喜歡他們"或"因為他們的名字,我們一開始並不喜歡他們".這很好玩,音樂是這個星球上可以改變所有事物的東西之一.

音樂可以讓人感到悲傷,直至哭泣.
是這樣的.我覺得音樂應該被賦予更多作為醫藥的功勞.醫生們最近都在研究這些.他們正努力找到音樂可以帶來的更多療效.

如果你是一個醫生,有人跑來跟你說"我得了皮疹",你會用新專輯中的哪首歌來治療他的病?
我不會選擇新專輯中的任何歌曲,但我會為他演奏Johnny Cash的"Ring of Fire".我不認為這是一首愛情歌曲.

新好的新專輯中有沒有一首能讓人哭泣的歌?
有的.我們在這張專輯中加入了更多舞曲的成分,雖然我們也有一些很棒的民謠和情歌.

很明顯,新好男孩的每張專輯中都有可以為整張專輯定義的民謠,比如"Climbing The Walls" ,或者"Drowning",或者別的什麼.在這張專輯中有這樣的歌麼?
說實話,我們還在選歌當中,但有一首叫做"Shattered"的歌,它很能觸動人們的心弦,很像"Drowning"和其他的一些歌曲.

這聽起來像是不錯的暗示.你很擅長這類歌曲."Drowning"--你沉溺了."Shot straight through the heart"--這很明顯讓人覺得很痛."Shattered"--喔.都是情傷,Nick.
這些都很經典.不知道為什麼,我們都很喜歡愛情歌曲.至少我們再也不唱那些"不可原諒的""牢不可破的""無法安慰的"了.我們不在這個階段了.

以後都不會有"blabla的"了?
再也不會有了.

你說過這張專輯的喻意會更積極.是RedOne為你們製作了整張專輯,還是你們在與不同的人群工作?
他為我們寫了三首歌.我們都覺得他為我們寫的歌都棒的不可思議,並且都是很流行的風格.你知道最有意思的是什麼麼?雖然他為Gaga和其他一些有名的歌手工作,但他真的是新好男孩的超級歌迷...很早以前,當他剛開始寫歌時,他就想要參與我們的專輯製作了.他很瞭解我們,並很努力地為我們寫歌.

這對你們來說會是很大的不同,因為像他這樣炙手可熱的"當紅炸雞子",應該也會使你們的歌變得極為流行吧.人們會不會認為你們費了很大的勁才請到他?
是我個人去請求RedOne為我們製作專輯的.我在Akon那裏知道了RedOne.我們當時說,"我們想和Akon合作".但他們說Akon很忙,我們也許可以去找RedOne.於是我開始聽RedOne的作品和Lady Gaga的專輯,然後我就去找他了.我說,"請一定要幫我們做這張專輯,拜託拜託拜託了".你知道的,我在求他.他說,"好的,但我還得先考慮一下.我需要一點時間".我回去以後想,"這傢伙肯定是不想和我們合作".但是,僅僅一段時間過後,他就對我說,"夥計,我只是需要點時間,因為我想給新好男孩做最好的專輯.我是你們的超級粉絲,所以我要確保做出最適合你們的音樂".他做到了.

有意思.這很不錯--人們仍然記得最初的自己.
我覺得最棒的事就是做出一聽就知道是我們的風格的歌曲.如果我們不做出這樣的音樂,人們就不會願意聽我們唱歌了.

所以他們會想買精選集.但你們想繼續做一些其他風格的音樂,是這樣吧.你們需要在保持原有風格的基礎上取得更多的進步.參與歌曲製作對此有幫助麼?
嗯,我們和T-Pain一起寫了些東西--"International"--這是一首十足的Pop.我很喜歡它.他還給我們寫了一首歌,叫什麼來著..(一邊唱一邊小聲嘟囔)對了--"She Can Dream".我也很喜歡這首歌.但我不知道它會不會被收入專輯.我對這張專輯的影響很大~我所做的就是到處跑,去找那些能使我們重新回到頂峰的製作人.其中之一是Jim Jonsin.Jim Jonsin更像一個R&B/hip-hop的製作人,但他為我們轉變了風格.他很瞭解hip-hop--他為Lil’ Wayne和TI工作.他為TI寫了"Whatever You Like",為Lil’ Wayne寫了"Lollipop".很多都是非常棒的歌曲.一開始我們還和一個叫做Jordan Omley的傢伙還有Ryan Tedder一起寫了"Undone".還有一首和Ryan Tedder合作的歌是"Helpless--featuring Pitbul".這是一首流行舞曲.還有一些別的歌曲,比如"Don’t Try This at Home",還有I’m Without You",都很不錯.但在最後,有一首非常非常特別的歌,我想它將會被作為第二單曲.這首歌完成後,將會成為我們的第二首"I Want It That Way".

真令人驚訝.
這首歌叫"This Is Us".是專輯的同名歌曲.當我們在演唱這首歌時,Wyclef走進了錄音室,坐在他的椅子上高高地舉起雙手,說--"這將會改變音樂界!"

我需要確定一下,他說了"這將會改變音樂界"?
是的.他說,"你們真的做到了!"

你們看起來很希望用這張專輯取得成功..有意思.這已經是你們的第七張錄音室專輯了,你也有你自己的個人專輯,你已經快30了...很多人會說,"它應該會賣得不錯吧,我不指望能賣出很多,我只想再做幾年,再來幾場巡迴演出,多掙點兒錢."但看起來你們很喜歡給人們帶來驚喜,並且取得了巨大的成功.
我給自己設立了很高的目標,從一個有野心的人的立場,也從一個普通人的角度.從我所做的事,我所引領的生活方式,還有外表,我都改變了自己.我要做最好的自己,在任何時間場合都是這樣.

很抱歉我總是想著這事,Wyclef真的說了你們的一首新歌將會"改變整個音樂界"麼?
嗯,是的,他說了.他說"這就是能夠改變整個音樂界的歌曲".

"戰慄"真正地做到了改變音樂界.在那之前的主流音樂和在那之後的完全不一樣.它改變了流行音樂,也改變了都市音樂--改變了一切.你覺得這首歌也會有如此大的影響力麼?
我不知道.我想我們所能做的就是繼續為做到最好的自己而繼續奮鬥.如果我們能做到,這首歌就能有如此巨大的影響力,並改變一些東西.我們過去經常做這種事.我們所代表的就是流行音樂的走向,就像最純粹的音樂.情歌,Pop,沒有任何詛咒之類的字眼,能使你隨之起舞,隨之哭泣.我想,像那樣的音樂應該繼續為電臺的點播量做出貢獻,它們太經典了--能再次做出這樣的音樂使我們非常愉快.

嗯,祝你們能再次擁有那樣的影響力,事實上--你說你們的音樂裏沒有任何詛咒之類的字眼,但你們有一首歌叫做"Shattered",那裏面有"shat"--正是"shit"的過去式.
哈哈,確實如此.如果有人對此感到反感,那麼我很抱歉.