MBW’s Key Songs In The Life Of… is a series in which we ask influential music industry figures about the tracks that have defined their life and career so far. Here, to coincide with his Spirit of Life Award Warner Records Co-Chairman and COO Tom Corson punches the buttons on the jukebox of his memory to call-up some classics. The Key Songs… series is supported by Sony Music Publishing.
Asking Tom Corson to select his Key Songs over this last couple of weeks might have been perfect or terrible timing.
Last Wednesday [October 15] Warner Records Co-Chairman and COO was presented (by Cher!) with the Spirit of Life Award at the annual fund-raising gala for City of Hope, the US cancer treatment and research organization.
It was, of course, a huge honor and something that Corson welcomed with open arms and a full heart, but it will undoubtedly have added pressure and stolen hours from what is by default an always-heavy schedule.
So, did he need to be tasked with picking a pitifully small selection of songs to sum up his life so far at the same time? Maybe not. Or maybe, with the Award reflecting not only his long-standing commitment to City of Hope, but also his stellar career, it was the perfect time to think back on why he’s in the business in the first place – and the joy that music has brought him along the way.
Reflecting first on the Spirit of Life recognition, Corson says: “It’s sort of surreal, because I’ve been involved in a number of these occasions with former bosses and mentors, and it never really occurred to me that I would be honored.
“My family’s been hit by cancer – my wife, my son, my mom; it’s something that’s very real and very close to me. So, whilst I was surprised and humbled to be asked, once it had sunk in I was extremely grateful and determined to do it properly.”
And on the challenge of selecting his Key Songs, he says: “It’s been more fun than not. I had a flight from LA to New York last week, and I spent pretty much the whole time making lists. I didn’t limit myself, I didn’t try to be strategic or especially diplomatic, I just kind of went for it.
“Some of them do have a business context, but all of them are very personal. And in every case, if I was on a desert island and these were all I had to listen to, I’d be happy with that…”
1) Sly & The Family Stone, Dance To The Music (1967)
I grew up in Seattle and the music in our home was everything from Bix Beiderbecke to Robert Johnson to Hank Williams. My mom and dad would be dancing in the living room, my sisters were listening to the local AM station.
And then I ended up going to a mostly Black middle school, and so different influences started to come into my life.
When I was about 13, I bought a stereo, the best one I could afford. And pretty much the first thing I did was go to Tower Records and buy Sly & The Family Stone’s Dance To The Music.
They also ended up being my first concert around the same time, at the Paramount Theater. The memory’s a bit blurry, but I was with three of my friends, a lot of weed smoke in the air.
Exactly 45 minutes late, Sly came on and blew us away. It’s still one of the most amazing shows I’ve seen.
I actually met him much later on, when I was at A&M, and he was on the label. It was sad, because he was never able to get it together to put out a record, but he was around the studio.
This song was probably the first seriously great piece of music that hit me, when everything before then had been quite sugary pop music. So it was a really important discovery for me.
2) The Rolling Stones, Start Me Up (1981)
In 1978, I was going to college at UCLA, and Some Girls by The Rolling Stones was the album. That’s when I really started to get The Stones.
You go through that album, there’s Beast of Burden and Shattered and so much else, you know, they’re in amazing form.
But I’m going to jump forward a couple of years and go with Start Me Up [from Tattoo You]. That song always hits me, whenever I hear it. I’ll just randomly ask Alexa to play it when I’m getting ready in the morning; it never fails.
It’s funny, because I went back and forth between Bob Marley’s live version of No Woman, No Cry, which is arguably a better song in certain ways, and certainly a more culturally impactful song.
But I think what stuck it was – and bear with me on this – I’m a pretty avid golfer, and a few years ago at my club, my partner and I were in the finals of this tournament, in a shootout situation.
All the other players are surrounding the green, the stereo’s blasting, the MC is talking on the mic; it’s quite chaotic.
And as I step up to take the putt for the tournament, they start to crank out Start Me Up. That might be the closest I’ve ever felt to being a rock star [laughs] – of course it helps that I made the putt!
3) The Police, Bring On The Night (1980)
In 1981 I had an internship at IRS records thanks to Jay Boberg [label co-founder with Miles Copeland]
Literally on my very first day, The Go-Go’s are shooting their first video, Karen and Richard Carpenter are in the office next to us – and then halfway through the day I see Herb Alpert walking around.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know jobs could be as good as this, I just didn’t think this was a job! Like, I didn’t think this was what anyone could do for a living; it was such an alien world to me.
I think the sum total of my expectation at that time was that I might get some free records, some concert tickets – and then go back and get a proper job after 12 months.
But then at the end of the internship, Jay offered me a job at IRS, which is where it really all started.
And right away we had the Go-Go’s album, we had REM’s Radio Free Europe off of the Chronic Town EP, we had The English Beat’s Save It For Later, we had Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo. It was just incredible.
In 1982, we’re all at the first ever US festival, started by Steve Wozniak. The Police were headlining. Miles’ brother, Ian Copeland, had a booking agency called FBI, and he stacked the bill with his acts.
We were there the whole day, hanging around in the heat with the artists. Then, when night fell, we were up on a little riser at the side of the stage. At one point, Miles says, ‘Who wants to go down to the side of the stage?’ Me! Of course! So he pulls me down and I’m literally on stage, with about 200,000 people out in the audience. The Police are playing Bring On The Night, and it’s just going off, you know?
Sting comes over to the side of the stage and suddenly he’s right in my face, playing his bass and singing about an inch away from me!
I’m including this purely as a fan, because that was such a moment, something I remember so vividly. And that’s why I’m going to go with the live version as my definitive selection, because that’s the version that relates so directly to that moment.
4) Creep, Radiohead (1992)
When A&M was sold to Polygram in 1990, I left and became Head of International at Capitol Records in LA.
There were all these acts that were signed-up by our affiliate labels, but we never picked one up out of the UK. That always frustrated me, because I’d go back and forth and I’d see these bands like Jesus Jones and EMF, but we never had them.
A little further down the line, there was a song and an act that my boss had passed on a couple of times – and so had everybody in the US system. The act was Radiohead, and the song was Creep, which I loved.
Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Live 105 in San Francisco started playing it. I got very excited and managed to convince the company to let me import several thousand CD singles into the Bay Area.
The stock blew out in less than a week, we picked up the act, and Creep became a No. 1 record. More than that, it became an iconic moment for the disaffected and the insecure.
Then comes The Bends, then OK Computer, and the Radiohead that we know and love today emerges.
The credit for their success belongs elsewhere, I’m more than happy to admit that, but I did champion them in America, we did break that record here and it turned out to be the start of something really special.
I left Capitol Records and joined Columbia in 1996, when Donnie Ienner came calling.
There’s no competitor more fierce, tough or brutal than Donnie. It was boot camp every day, and I learned so much.
When I walked in, the label was kind of in between hot streaks. But we very quickly. came back to number one.
It was the beginning of the Fugees, and then Lauryn Hill, and Ricky Martin, I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith, plus Mariah Carey, Tony Bennett, Bruce Springsteen and Barbra Streisand were putting out records.
But there are two that really stick with me. One is Maxwell’s Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder).
In certain circles, Maxwell’s an icon. If you talk to another group of people, they maybe don’t see him as a huge artist, but for me the important thing is that he did it his own way. He was always very alternative in terms of his sound and his videos, and it was always his vision.
Ascension is a perfect R&B record – the voice, the production, the guitar by Wah Wah Watson, it’s just beautiful.
And I’m going to pair this with Alicia Keys’ Fallin’. I remember the day that she was signed to Columbia Records. They had a piano room on the top floor of the old Sony building on Madison Avenue, and we were all brought up there to meet Alicia Keys, our brand new signing.
And there she was, maybe 15 years old, playing piano, a really lovely and obviously supremely talented young girl. But they couldn’t quite get it right in terms of the A&R. They were trying to push her into a Mariah kind of thing, and it just didn’t work.
Around this time, I left Columbia for Arista, to work with Clive Davis. Within six months, Clive is out, he starts J Records and pulls me over there with him – something I’m still thankful for, what an amazing experience.
We brought Alicia Keys over, and we absolutely smashed it with her. It was a really great time in my life. I had a big job, I became General Manager of the label a few years later, and eventually ended up running RCA when Doug [Morris] came in [as CEO of Sony Music Entertainment] in 2011.
But going back to Fallin’, and to Songs In A Minor, I can’t think of too many artists that have arrived on the scene with such an impact as Alicia Keys did at that time. She performed on Oprah, we dropped the album that week, and it went to No. 1.
Everybody thought we’d hyped it, and I was like, ‘No, this is all completely real, this is all her.’
6) Kings of Leon, Revelry (2009)
While Sex On Fire and Use Somebody were the smashes, Revelry remains a song important to me as it is perfection from one of my favorite bands.
I had seen them at their first NY show at Mercury Lounge when they were very green. They were signed to RCA by one of the great A&Rs, Steve Ralbovsky, before RCA merged with J/Arista. Their early albums are iconic, and they had started to break in the UK, but hadn’t yet in any market other than Australia.
When we merged with RCA, I was thrilled to be able to work with them and went to Nashville to hear the album and hang with the band, which turned into quite a night! I worked very closely on the project at the time when I was leading this version of RCA and I had the opportunity to champion a band I loved, poised for a breakthrough.
We chose Sex On Fire as the first single and that ignited the world. Then Use Somebody broke through at every radio format. I love those songs, but Revelry is my go-to from Only By The Night which, top to bottom, is a classic. The album and songs went on to win four Grammys and cement the Kings as legends.
I recently saw them at the Forum and they are better than ever.
7) Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball (2013)
I became President & COO of RCA Records when Doug Morris came in, and we were a powerhouse.
The roster was unprecedented. We had Alicia, Chris Brown, Usher, Pink, Justin Timberlake. And then we signed Childish Gambino, we signed Khalid and Bryson Tiller – neither of whom had played a live show at that point.
I also signed Pentatonix, and they ended up becoming one of the best-selling acts at Sony for many years.
I also remember going to the studio at Sunset Marquis to listen to Miley Cyrus’s demos and ideas. She came in with her mom, Tish, at 11 o’clock at night. They had just been at a charity dinner, dressed to the nines – these two beautiful women with this childlike energy. And they played us Wrecking Ball. We knew we had to sign it straight away, and of course it became a classic, along with the album, Bangerz.
I think what was so important about that record is it kind of changed everything. Because everyone dismissed these girls coming out of Disney, and with Wrecking Ball and everything around that, Miley not only crushed it, she buried Hannah Montana.
She was just a fearless, talented young woman making her own rules. And she’s never stopped.
8) Rüfüs Du Sol, On My Knees (2021)
On June 12, 2017, I met with Max Lousada and he asked me if I might be interested in taking the Warner Bros Records job.
I can’t remember if I told Max this at the time, but it was always a dream of mine to work at Warner Bros. When I was at A&M, they were like the grown-up version – or the big business version – of what we were doing.
I had such respect for what Mo [Austin] and Lenny [Waronker] had done, plus I had a bunch of friends that worked there. I was always kind of hurt that they never asked me!
That weekend, Susan, my wife, and I, were going to see Rüfüs Du Sol at Gov Ball, because we were both such huge fans – and would only become bigger fans as time went on.
I’ve gone to get us a drink, and when I get back she’s talking to Jon George – basically because they’d seen her taking a picture of their trailer!
Eventually we’re all talking – us, the band and their manager, Danny [Robson]. They’d had their troubles with Columbia and in fact had parted ways. So, I ask them what’s next and they tell me they’ve just signed with Warner Bros. Records. Susan turns to me and says, ‘You’re going to Warner!’.
It was a band I love, pointing the way, so I have to include a track of theirs here. And as much as I love Innerbloom and You Were Right and Brighter and No Place, I’ve got to choose On My Knees. It’s got this menacing, straight-to-the-heart, melancholic tone. It harkens back to some of my favorite Depeche Mode songs, or maybe even a New Order song or two.
And to see them play stadiums and arenas and headline festivals now, with them part of our label, that’s a real joy to me.
9) Madonna, Ray of Light (2000)
I have such a respect, such awe, for the history of Warner Music: Sinatra, Hendrix, Prince, Fleetwood Mac, The Ramones, Van Halen, Neil Young, Green Day, Linkin Park, Deftones, and on and on, you know.
Someone who fits right in there is Madonna. And a track that I could listen to forever is Ray of Light. I think it’s one of the seminal electronic dance songs of all time.
I spent a lot of the 1980s in New York – and a lot of that time was spent in clubs, like Danceteria, Limelight, Area, which I thought was the most fascinating one, and then the late-night ones, like Save The Robots.
So when I met Madonna, she and I were talking about those spaces and those days, and the music we’d listened to there.Ray of Light is clearly a track and project inspired by clubbing, and it’s one of the iconic songs and periods of her career.
I could easily have gone with Hung Up from Confessions on a Dancefloor five years later, which was sort of a companion piece to this, but I’m going to go with Ray of Light to wrap things up.
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