Babyface's Playlist Includes James Taylor? An Interview with the R&B Singer

(andPOP) - As a producer, singer, and songwriter, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds had a hand in much of the R&B played on the radio during the 1990s.

Though he began his career in the late '80s, writing songs for artists such as Sheena Easton and Bobby Brown, at his height, Edmonds was working with Madonna, Eric Clapton, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige, among others. That he would slow down was by choice, not reputation; he remains known for his smooth production values and sensitive songwriting. And whenever he comes up with more personal material, he saves it for himself.

"I think at this point, for myself as an artist, it has to be personal," he says. "I think that people expect that at this point."

So it would seem a little surprising that Edmonds, of all people, would do a cover album. More surprisingly, Playlist, which hit stores on Tuesday, doesn't cover a single tune that would qualify as R&B (his favourite track on the album is his cover of Fire and Rain).

Playlist arrives ahead of schedule for Edmonds (his last album was 2005's Grown and Sexy), who's known for taking four or five years between releases.

"I don't know why I take long," he laughs. "I just don't feel like I gotta rush it out."

Talking on the phone from Los Angeles while doing cardio, Edmonds comes off, unsurprisingly, as down to earth and unpretentious, the kind of guy you'd expect to cover James Taylor.

EEW: So – why a cover album?

KE: Good question. I don't know... I didn't set out to do it per se, I just kind of wanted to do an album that was of music that inspired me, that was part of the making of who I am as an artist. Most people would think it's purely R&B, probably comes of having an R&B career, but me being able to do things like write new kind of singles, or even going to work with Eric Clapton later and working with other pop artists, it was because I listened to the James Taylors and the Breads of the world that gave me the insight to write and produce and perform this kind of music."

EEW: Why these songs? Wonderful Tonight makes perfect sense, but I don't think a lot of your fans would expect you to cover James Taylor or Knockin' On Heaven's Door.

KE: When I was growing up, in my house it was mostly James Brown and Temptations, Stevie Wonder. You'd hear that playing in the house, and then when we would drive around, it'd always be the soul station, except after five o'clock the soul station would go off, so then it'd be the AM station, which we might listen to if we were driving a long distance. But mostly when I would go to church on Sundays, I'd stay in for as long as... when the choir was finished, the preacher would start delivering his sermon. That's when I would sneak out of church, go to my mom's car, and turn on the radio, and I'd turn up the radio and on the soul station. Of course they were playing gospel music, and probably some choirs that kinda sucked too so, I wouldn't listen to that, so I'd switch to the AM station, and that's where I was mostly introduced to the James Taylors and the Breads and Dave Loggins. That music talked to me because I played acoustic guitar, and so I was finally hearing music that kind of made sense with this guitar that I had.

EEW: It spoke to you. It was something you could play.

KE: Exactly. So I wanted to learn those chords, because it worked with acoustic guitar; it just didn't seem to work with James Brown.

EEW: When did you start playing guitar?

KE: I started playing the guitar when I was in about sixth grade. It was probably between seventh and eighth grade that I was listening to the radio and hearing all these new kinds of music.

EEW: Do you have a favourite out of the songs you covered?

KE: I'm a James Taylor fan, that's why I ended up doing two James Taylor songs.

EEW: Shower the People and Fire and Rain?

KE: Yeah.

EEW: Tell me about the originals on this album. What inspired those?

KE: Well initially I wasn't going to add any originals at all, because I felt... I didn't feel right putting originals there because part of the thing was these are records that inspired me but also I think these are great classic songs and –

EEW: You don't want to put in songs that say, "I am being so arrogan,t I think these songs stand up to the classics."

KE: Exactly. And I wanted it to all feel right, and if suddenly a pop song pops up, "what's that doing there?" But L.A. Reid, who's my friend and partner for a number of years at Island Def Jam said, "I really want you to put these songs on it." So I started to write some things and I wrote a few things and I didn't like 'em at all.

EEW: You wrote multiple songs and thought, "I'll pick – "

KE: Nothing. I actually decided I wasn't gonna do it. And then one day, a couple different days, these songs came up. Ultimately I knew that if I was gonna do anything that it had to be heartfelt songs, songs that actually relate to me.

EEW: What inspired these two?

KE: Well, the first song, Not Going Nowhere, is a song to my sons. They're going through a divorce, so it was a song to tell them everything is okay and I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right there for them.

EEW: And the other one is –

KE: A song that came out of nowhere too. I was staying in Washington DC at a friend's house. The friend I was staying with, his son was in the service and one of his friends that he was in service with, it was just in the paper that he was killed in action. And so it was my first time kind of being around, being that close to –

EEW: Someone who had died.

KE: And so it just kind of hit me there, and I start thinking to myself, well, it's really wild just to think of the parents and all their friends and they have to feel this life that was just and why he lost it, and the only thing I kept thinking is that he and a number of others lost their lives thinking they were protecting us, and they died for us. And that's all I kept thinking about so I felt like I had to write a song that said, ultimately was to say, thank you.

EEW: Are there other covers you wanted to put on the album?

KE: Y'know, there's some I tried, and I couldn't pull 'em off.

EEW: Like what?

KE: There's the Gilbert O'Sullivan song I always loved, Alone Again Naturally. There was Harry Chapin, Cat's In The Cradle. There's Vincent, by... I always forget his name (EEW: We both did; Don McLean, as it turns out)... beautiful song, but it's a song about suicide, so I thought, "I don't wanna do that." There were a couple more, but ultimately what I wanted to accomplish on the record, even though I was doing covers or remakes, I wanted to make sure all the songs felt like they were things that I would do and that I wasn't just doing a cover song, I wanted them to sound natural. And so –

EEW: These were songs that didn't quite –

KE: Songs that I felt I could do and as you hear them then you can say, "okay, that makes sense. I see why you were inspired by that."

EEW: Did any artists join you this time around?

KE: I had Brandy do backgrounds for me on Please Come to Boston, but other than that, I guess it was kind of a record that I was inspired by, and felt like it should be more –

EEW: It should be more you.

KE: Yeah.