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Uptown Special
has a wealth of collaborators: Kevin Parker, Stevie Wonder, Bruno Mars, and Kanye West collaborator
Jeff Bhasker. But these figures are all from the music world. Wearing his producer hat, Ronson didn’t pen lyrics,
he procured a lyricist, and not just any lyricist. If you’re going to have someone write the words, it may as well be
your favourite novelist. Michael Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author: he didn’t write words and ‘pop
them under the door’, he worked directly with Ronson and various contributing vocalists in the studio. Chabon was
introduced to Ronson by mutual friends Andrew Wyatt (of Miike Snow), and was flattered by a subsequent invitation
to collaborate. “He must have inferred from reading my last book
Telegraph Avenue
that I was a music fan,” Chabon
told the N.M.E in January. “I write about music and lyrics in the context of that novel. The initial affection he inspired
in me grew over time: from the start we hit it off, and I thought ‘let’s give it a shot’.”
Hey naysayers, this is actually pretty
damn tasty. A super funkdadelic bass
line straight out of Bootsy Collins’
suitcase struts along your street, while
‘our boy’ Kevin Parker gives the Tame
Impala space rock treatment; sky-high
vocals and a sleazy guitar break that
will have Prince breaking out in a
sweat.
Here’s the weird dub groove and Stevie
Wonder again, but this time the musical
Talking Book is singing his heart out as
the electro atmos swirls up and away.
New York, circa 2001? Ha! First London
in about 1972, as a big, fat, Bowie/
Bolan glam riff slides its wandering
hands around your waist. It all gives
way soon enough for a silky smooth
yacht-rock inspired vocal turn from
Keyone Starr. Infectious.
A positively Beatle-esque dreamer
(fuzzy guitars, floating, whimsical
vocals) that leaves the pastoral past and
hits the sneaker-freaker streets of Philly
and Harlem halfway through. More
proof that Ronson genuinely knows his
music backwards and forwards – any
age, any country, any era, any time, as
long as there’s something soulful and
heartfelt in a song, he’ll be playing
around with it and making it his own.
singing on three songs (and backing vocals on
three others). He’s also contributed drums,
guitars and synth.
Wonder’s unmistakable contribution
appears on the album opener
Uptown’s First
Finale
, and it’s typical one minute, 38 seconds
of Ronson ‘why can’t I do it all?’ perfection.
It creeps up on us, all smoky atmospheric
dub touches, before Wonder’s signature
harmonica cuts through the ether; and a vocal
not out of place on Prince’s
Diamonds and
Pearls
announces proceedings in no uncertain
terms.
Of course, the album has been prefaced
by the summer sailing single
Uptown Funk
.
While the presence of co-writer Bruno Mars
on vocals got it green lights the world over for
commercial radio airplay, even the most hard-
nosed, puritanical music fans couldn’t resist
its infectious refrain and summer-fun groove
(not that you’ll get any of them to admit that).
But not at all album guests were famous,
established artists. Ronson
and album co-producer Jeff
Bhasker wanted the kind of
unfettered, stirring gospel-
influenced sound, untouched
by the baggage of stripper pop
or auto-tune. Accordingly, the
pair set out across the USA on
a roadtrip of discovery, looking
for the singer to match the
sound in their heads. They
took in New Orleans and
Baton Rouge in Louisiana,
traversed Tennessee, Arkanas
and Illinois. But it was in
Jackson, Mississippi, that
they came across the young
Keyone Starr singing in a
gospel choir. Immediately,
they knew they’d found
the sound; Starr was
spirited away to Royal Studios in Memphis,
Tennessee, and three of her vocal tracks are
on the album.
While the breadth of Ronson’s musical
outlook is vividly expressed via the tricky cuts
and corners of
Uptown Special
, something
that’s simply compulsory viewing for all
music fans – Ronson admirers or not – is his
2014 TED talk/performance on the nature of
sampling, and its transformative influence
on music. Ronson remixed 15 previous TED
talks as an audio visual collage, and mounted
his argument that sonically recycling music
“shouldn’t sound like ‘hijacking nostalgia’ but
should always bring something new into the
equation.” With
Uptown Special
, he backs
himself –and the argument. So, hear it.
Uptown Special
is
available now via Sony Music.
See Mark Ronson’s
TED talk at TED.com