Llanview: Rock City
Soap Opera Digest: So what songs is Nelly Furtado going to do?
Paul Glass: She’ll do the new single, “Say It Right,” which she did at the American Music Awards and people went crazy. It fits well with the show because it’s kind of downtempo and is a great song. Then she’ll also do her hit “Promiscuous.”Digest: How did you get her?
Glass: We’ve had an amazing year starting with Lifehouse, and I think we’ve just built from that. We’ve shown the industry that we show results when we have music on the show. That’s a battle I’m always fighting, to try to bring more credibility to the genre. We had a big increase in sales for Lifehouse. Mary J. Blige was enormous, like a 40 percent bump in her sales the week she was on the show. So we show people those numbers and they’re like, “Well, I should go on that show.” We have an audience that responds to music and buys music, so I can argue with them that they can go on a talk show that has the same ratings as ours, or less, and they may not get the same [increased sales] results as [with] us. So I tell them to come on our show and we’ll even integrate it into the story, like we did with Nelly.Digest: Have your ratings increased as a result?
Glass: I think they do for the day, but for me, it’s more a matter of just putting that spin on the show, whether it’s a surprise or for the overall aura of the show. For me, it’s more of a building process. Like with the Mary J. Blige show, what I liked was there were things that were happening that day that are attractive to the audience, so [we try to] get the extra people to watch and then they see a good show. With Mary J. Blige, we got a piece on MTV, and it wasn’t a piece we built for them, and that lends credibility. A personality on there was talking about the show and all the stuff we’re doing, like how this year we had Jeanne Ortega and Tito Puente, Jr. too.Digest: How much input do the musicians have as to what they’ll do?
Glass: I tell them they can do whatever they want to do and then we’ll figure out the best way to integrate it. I usually try to get them to do a hit, like “Promiscuous,” which was just nominated for a Grammy and won a Billboard Award, so I wanna hear that song, and the audience wants to hear it, too, and then we’ll do something else so that the label gets what they want, too, which is to promote their stuff.Digest: How do you decide what artists you want?
Glass: I really just want to get as much name recognition or as big event stuff as we can. [Executive Producer] Frank Valentini is great because he’s really into music. I pitch him stuff all the time. Something like Nelly, we both really wanted and we spent months and months working out the schedule.Digest: So you go after them?
Glass: Yeah, with Nelly Furtado, I contacted the label and they put me in touch with the publicists. I pitched them a bunch of stuff, gave them a videotape of the show, the marketing results and numbers, everything to try to convince them that this is a great thing. I think usually when they see it and the stuff we’ve done — we have some really great tape from this year — it makes them more comfortable. I’m really proud with the way stuff sounds on this show. It’s like, “You don’t have to worry about us. This is what we’re going to do for you.”Digest: So will Nelly Furtado perform live?
Glass: Yeah, we’re recording five mics live. All the vocals are live, including background vocals. The song “Promiscuous” is a duet, and she travels with this singer in the band whose name is Socrates and he does the male part in that duet. Wait until you see him do it. The guy on the original recording was Timbaland, but wait until you see Socrates. He’s unbelievable. They have chemistry and he has personality. And he’s a great talent and musician.Digest: You reach a good demographic with the acts you’ve had on this year. Lifehouse, Nelly, Mary J., they have that younger, hip, urban edge, but at the same time they get some crossover with an older pop audience.
Glass: It doesn’t alienate anybody. Somebody might think of Mary J. Blige as a hip-hop artist, and then they hear a song on our show that has more of a laid-back R&B feel with emotion in it, and it’s tied into a couple of characters, all of a sudden, it’s very accessible to them. It’s the same thing with Nelly Furtado. She runs the gamut of styles, from hip-hop all the way to laid-back R&B and traditional ballads. I want everyone to enjoy it. We’re always trying to balance style, and a lot of it is who we’re going to go after next. And it’s been great with Capricorn that we can incorporate the club and make a lot of stuff available. It’s fun and I hope the audience likes it. There’s so many shows, and with 250 shows a year this is something a little bit different that still feels like it’s incorporated in the story. Digest: Does Nelly do a few scenes outside of the performance?
Glass: Yeah, that was something she wanted to do. I offered that to the publicist. There’s a couple people in the music industry who watch the show, and I tell them, “You tell me what you want to do, a song, a scene with the characters you like.” For them it’s fun and a whole different world. Nelly is running around the whole world [performing], and this is a little bit of make-believe for her. She was great.
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