Does It Inspire You?

Innovative Grammy-nominated multi-genre artist/writer/producer Louise Goffin tours the 2016 National Association of Music Manufacturers NAMM annual convention in Anaheim, CA

“While I am perfectionistic, I like to record messy and keep it fresh.” — Louise Goffin

When it comes to cutting-edge sophisticated songwriting and production, Louise Goffin has emerged as a top-level writer/producer and artist. She is one of very few, maybe almost no other artist, that seemingly effortlessly flows through diverse styles and blowing the doors off of all of them. Louise Goffin brings sensibilities from the best of music from the last half a century and what she creates with this DNA feels effortlessly modern and cutting edge. She might be on the talkback mic with a conductor of a 40 piece orchestral session out of Prague , or producing a horn section from a top L.A. studio, or showing up live in a small club just singing and playing a ukulele, but from balls-out rock and roll to the most eloquent melodic Grammy-nominated pop hooks, Louise Goffin taps into some sixth sense hyper-genius, repeatedly blowing minds with her musical adventurism. She never lets her range of musical vocabulary stop her from reaching her audience on a deep emotional level. Somehow, she has managed to become among a very tiny handful of the most elite of the elite go-to songwriters who can hand-craft a musical experience that reaches people on every level. As a child and teen musical prodigy, who was recording vocal harmony stacks at age 14 for network tv animated specials, which is unusual enough, she had already been songwriting for six years, starting at age 8. Louise Goffin has been heard on the soundtracks of such documentary films as the concert film Glastonbury, in a national tv commercial, and in the theme song of a hit tv series. You can even see her portrayed as a plastic doll as the very history of pop music itself is presented in the smash Broadway musical Beautiful. Her fan base not only includes some of the most legendary figures of pop and rock music, such as Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, and Michael McDonald, who have all been quoted as Louise enthusiasts, but she also manages to be welcomed into any room with world class talents listening to what she has to say, such as Sheryl Crow collaborator Jeff Trott, and Pink Floyd/Peter Gabriel/Kiss/Alice Cooper producer Bob Ezrin. She also is a guiding force for a whole generation of young songwriters, musicians and artists, some of whom study under Goffin in her songwriting master classes. It’s been observed by FMQB that if you gathered up some of Louise Goffin’s fans, you’d have a pretty decent-sized record label with a large catalog. The producers and artists who know the most about music are the hardest-core Louise Goffin fans of all, in a manner similar to the fan bases of artists like Katy Perry and Kate Bush. Recently, Louise Goffin did some co-producing with legendary producer Chris Seefried, who recently cowrote and produced a track on the new album by Stevie Wonder collaborator, 2016 Grammy-nominated Andra Day. Goffin is a multi-instrumentalist who knows her way around keyboards, bass, drums, acoustic and electric guitars, ukuleles and lead and backing vocals. That is why Jeff Trott suggested Louise Goffin as a guitarist for the notoriously perfectionist Roland Orzabal, with her touring as a guitarist, both electric and acoustic for Orzabal’s band Tears For Fears. And yes, that is Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp singing background on the most recent 2014 Louise Goffin album, courtesy of a Bob Ezrin session down the hall at legendary Village Studios. There are few artists in this world today who have that kind of street cred with hard rock artists one moment, and be exploding on Soundcloud with delicate, sophisticated and emotional pop melodies written at age 20 yet, the next moment.

Here Louise Goffin is seen with other top songwriters including: Michelle Lewis, Lisa Loeb, Holly Palmer and Shelly Peiken, who were also mentors at the event.

Louise and the other top songwriter/mentors performing together at the WriteGirlLA event. Top row left to right Louise Goffin, Holly Palmer, Shelly Peiken, Lisa Loeb bottom row left to right Courtney Harrell, Jill Sobule, Laurie Geltman, Heidi Rojas.

Louise Goffin with smash songwriter Holly Knight, where they both were instructing songwriting students

Louise and other top songwriters donating their time to teach a new generation of young female songwriters at WriteGirlLA event in L.A., Feb 2016. Lauren Christy of the mega-smash producing group The Matrix with her arm around Louise in back. Far right rear is a staff volunteer. In the front left to right: hit artist Lisa Loeb, #1 UK and yet American songwriter/artist Janice Robinson, and smash hit songwriter Shelly Peiken.

Now that she’s almost grown up, the question everyone is asking is, what is Louise Goffin going to do next? The answer is, whatever you least expect. Rumors and excitement just began swirling around the internet that she is gearing up yet more super-productions. But ya know how it is with these Grammy-nominated studio perfectionists. It’ll be there when it gets there. And as Steve Jobs used to say, oh yeah, just one more thing. More than one of the top management at FMQB are huge fans of Louise Goffin.

When we want to put the really good music on, this is what we listen to. Louise Goffin is the ultimate in top-level songwriting, period. We call her Beatles-in-a-body. Which explains why we keep literally tripping into Louise Goffin Secret Believers…in our own offices, at radio, in the songwriter/musician community where we encountered a number of songwriters who had written extremely well-known, heavy radio recurrent hits, and among the most elite record producers in the world. Goffin turned out to the be under-the-radar, but known and loved by those most in the know.

Only the highest level of artist is ever going to get to record on the houseboat recording studio in London of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. This boat was where some major Pink Floyd material was recorded by super-producer Bob Ezrin. Louise is shown here, on that boat, recording one of her seven albums.	“Look who I found when I went into village Recording Studios today…the one and only Geoff Emerick! In case you were just born, he recorded Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles, and Abbey Road and is only one of the best engineers in recording history!” To which, FMQB adds, “Hey Louise, what do you mean ‘one of the best engineers in recording history!'”?? FMQB knows for a fact that Geoff Emerick is absolutely, hands-down, THE greatest recording, and live front of house engineer in all history! As well as being one of the all-time greatest producers. And we oughta know cause Geoff did the most amazing and intense FOH engineering we ever saw, on Cheap Trick performs Sgt. Pepper Live, with FMQB’s Mitch Rudman sitting right near him. Louise is the kind of artist/producer who, if she hears Geoff Emerick down the hall from her at a top recording studio, she’s gonna go interact with him, as the pic shows. That’s consistently the level of artistry Louise seeks.
Louise has travelled from Gilmour to Gilmore.
Louise Goffin was well-known for singing on “Wherever You Lead”, the theme song to the hit TV series Gilmore Girls along with Louise’s mom, Carole King, who wrote the song. We received late-breaking permission to reveal that Louise Goffin will be filming a speaking role appearance in March 2016 for an episode of the re-boot new production of the Gilmore Girls TV series. In it, Louise will perform a new song 100% written by Louise. Information on what character Louise is playing is so top-secret that even though very important people read FMQB, even you are not cleared for this information yet.

So when the opportunity arose to tag along with Louise Goffin as she put her legendary ears to the street to seek out the latest music creation and producing technology at the annual NAMM National Association of Music Manufacturers conference in January 2016, we were all-in. As she ferreted out trends and technologies that you may well hear on cutting-edge music two and three years from now, FMQB wanted to know, what would she discover, and how would she react? In between hanging out with some of the top producer/mixers in the world who were presenting at NAMM, she managed to discover everything from the latest in real acoustic instruments, to leading-edge new computer mixing and music creation software, as well as amazing recreations of classic and previously difficult to obtain analog synthesizers. Today’s modern music as heard at radio and streaming, is the product of sophisticated computer algorithms, and talented musicians who put their fingers on real strings and actually sing. And everything in between.

Check out Louise’s own photos and discoveries as she tours NAMM. Among the photos, you’ll see some pics of frequent Louise Goffin collaborator and associate, legendary producer, engineer, mixer and songwriter Greg Wells, who has co-written and produced songs on every Katy Perry album, as well as co-written and produced the two most recent Katy Perry mega-productions on the Grammy awards show. His songs have appeared on albums such as the Diamond-selling Adele album 21, as well as the 6-million selling single Grace Kelly, by UK artist Mika. Greg Wells is still trying to get his sales numbers up though, since his work has appeared so far on albums selling only a paltry 85 million units. Lately he’s become the literal poster child for Avid Pro Tools, of a successful producer managing a huge recording session, as well as being the number 1 most requested guest, appearing three times on the legendary mixer Dave Pensado’s Pensado’s Place tv show which is entirely dedicated to interviewing the top record mixers in the world. Whether he was producing a record session at Abbey Road studios, with Paul McCartney wandering in through the back door, or at his own Rocket Carousel studios in L.A., he’s become one of the top go-to writer/producers in the world today, and among the many artists in diverse styles he has produced, he produced Louise Goffin. And they together in turn produced two other new young music artists. You will see pictured here photos of Wells presenting the latest in his series of custom audio mixing plugins for the Waves company, which is the leading company for music audio production plugins. His series of Greg Wells plugins basically, you turn one knob and then under the hood, it controls a whole set of complex Waves plugins, changing settings as if you had a miniature Greg Wells inside your computer setting up very complex audio chain magic, as if by…magic. You know how it is with these world-class mixers…they got secret sauce. These are the kinds of technologies we at FMQB wanted to show our audience, the kinds of things technology is only just now making possible. You could have some kid in Des Moines making a record in her bedroom, and she’s got Greg Wells setting up an audio chain for her, via this type of software. The only thing it can’t do yet is, we’ve noticed a lot of artists particularly young female artists, have been coming to Greg Wells to co-write and produce these very big emotional ballads to be performed on the biggest tv award shows and award-winning videos, and we don’t think he has that GregCentric plugin yet that will co-write the song for you. But then, Greg hasn’t told us what’s in development

Louise Goffin’s rabid following among the musical creative community is so strong, she recently conducted an epic interview for American Songwriter magazine, shedding light on the inside details of her creative process, because the real songwriters want to know how she does it. We’re talking about a songwriter with the unprecedented cojones to write a song and then perform it solo in a live radio interview the following week, a feat that as far as we know, basically nobody did, the closest being Instant Karma by John Lennon. Basically, she does it all. And we mean, the entire canvass of musical possibilities gets covered.

But then what do you expect from an artist who debuted live as Jackson Browne’s opening act at age 17, wrote a song in 18 minutes and debuted it on stage in a song improv game, just a few months ago, in L.A.., who released her first of what is now seven albums, at age 19 and who unlike many of the other young artists we see, Lorde excepted, basically entirely wrote that album. Who except for a tiny handful of brilliant covers, solo writes or co-writes almost every song on every one of those seven albums, and who has now reached the status of producer of a Grammy-nominated record. As well as writing and producing a host of other artists, male and female, black and white, old and young. Yes, she is the definition of the Real Deal. A guitarist so good that Tears for Fears had to strap a camera onto her Stratocaster. Goffin also has developed a history of grabbing the very top session players in the world for her recording sessions and live concerts, guys like bassist Bob Glaub who has credits a mile long playing for the biggest of the big music artists. And these top session players like Glaub are in turn, huge fans of Louise Goffin, Glaub having even written about Louise Goffin himself on UNKOVR, just in 2015. Oh yeah, by the way, Louise Goffin is the patron saint of the intelligent audience everywhere, so her fanbase has an IQ that’s bumped a bit higher than the usual, which makes her especially demographically attractive. Don’t say FMQB didn’t give you the heads up on Louise Goffin, cause we just did.

Multi-instrumentalist Louise Goffin on vocals and bass, live:

Why have we not heard about Louise Goffin, how could this have remained a mystery for so long? There are just certain kinds of brilliant artists, they are just, let’s say it, so obsessed with creating a higher level of music that they stay in the studio and keep working and working the music until they reach unprecedented artistic levels, song after song. These kind of artists are the realest of the Real Deals. They aren’t even necessarily seeking fame, they just want to write a better chorus. And it’s not something that just happens, this kind of artist will go through all sorts of explorations to make it happen. Goffin went to the UK to soak up the greatest new influences of the UK music world. She returned to the States and devoted years to raising her own two musical prodigy sons. Yes they are both songwriters. And then sometimes, what happens with this rare kind of person is, there is an explosion and suddenly, the world figures out what’s been happening. So just consider FMQB your own personal Wikileaks, as we lift the veil on something that a handful of insiders, mainly inside the industry, have been hip to for awhile. That in the last few months, has suddenly been exploding on Soundcloud streaming with over 80,000 streams of I’m Not Rich But I’m Not Poor. And if we had to confess, yes we got a little inside information, some unreleased tracks from Louise Goffin, that we know are gonna blow the doors off the industry. But even we don’t know what she’s really up to. We just know she’s ready to take names and bend brains.

Louise has become a powerful force influencing across generations. Here she is in 2015 teaching songwriting in a kid’s music academy. these kids will remember this the rest of their lives. Maybe some will become major songwriters some day.

A whole new generation of young songwriters is being influenced and mentored by Louise Goffin (@lulahoop). Louise is seen with a young songwriter she mentored and co-wrote with at the annual WriteGirlLA songwriting workshop on Feb. 27th, 2016 in Los Angeles. The event had 116 young female songwriting students.

Enjoy the NAMM exploration with FMQB and legendary artist, producer and master songwriter, the Grammy-nominated Louise Goffin. In it, you will see a variety of musical hardware, software and technologies. What FMQB wanted most to know was, when we send in a top of world-class songwriter/artist/producer, to explore a dizzying array of music technologies used to create the kind of music we hear or will be hearing two and three years from now on airplay rotation, how would she react? We got a lot more than we bargained for… a reaction so simple and to the core of the matter, that FMQB thinks this message will resonate through the entire music industry.

“As for the things I saw at NAMM, I could respond to all of it by saying that I am always looking for new sounds, new toys to play with, to spark song ideas. Technology is a way to create an environment for a vocal, an arrangement, and a performance to live in, one that is conducive to the feeling I want to convey. Technology should never be in the way of a performance, rather it should help that performance by making it feel as emotional as it can. There’s no way to take in the volume of how many new things are on the market. But there is a way to decide whether or not something new is useful quickly. Does it inspire you? Does it add to the magic already there or does it take away from it? No technology can take the place of a really great performance.” — Louise Goffin

At the Soundtoys booth I got a demo of Little AlterBoy. Talk about gender benders. It’s Soundtoys’ exciting new tool for dramatic voice alteration. True you can change the pitch of a voice, but you can change tone without changing pitch, so it sounds like a different gender singing. Apparently you can use MIDI for creative vocoder-like effects. Soundtoys is a colorful and fun bundle.	Ran right into producer, songwriter and mixer, Greg Wells with a captive audience, demoing for Mix with the Masters. He said something about keeping it simple. He suggested I try out his Waves plugins in a 7 day trial and see if I like them. I’m not a plugin geek, I just like songs that sound good, so I’m game to try something new.	This wasn’t new. But it reminded me that there is something to boxes with a limited number of choices. How far can you take those limits by chaining up to other things?
Louise Goffin checking out a recreation of a classic analog modular synth. The newer digital software synths route filters and oscillators via code, and pictures on a screen. The original analog synths routed using patchcords as shown in this pic, and are craved for their phat sound. But you couldn’t always play chords with your cords, because often these units were monophonic, meaning they only played one note at a time–such as the kind Louise describes in the next photo. Is this one going to bring a special quality to upcoming records? It’s always an adventure.	The new technology at NAMM is about using the best of what’s available to recreate what sounds vintage. Here Moog synthesizers created an island where visitors could mess around with their new monophonic synth model, in a variety of shapes and sizes. (The woman playing the synth is not Louise Goffin.)
Roland made a name bringing audio gear like mixers and effects units to the semi-pro musician market. Now they’re in the synth game, packs up like a mini-briefcase, open it up, launch sonic attack guerilla-style at the venue of your choice. Super-miniaturized.	This is the kind of advanced technology that has been revolutionizing music production recently. This piece of hardware from Elektron is used as a super-miniaturized control surface to control virtual synth software. It can do a lot of tricks in a very small, very lightweight package, and it lets you put your fingers right onto those virtual software instruments. It’s the best of both worlds, but it is a very different kind of thing from the classic old analog synths you see pictured elsewhere here, because everything here is software, with hardware controls in your hand. A number of companies that make virtual synth digital software have gotten into this game of having a physical control surface unit to interface to their custom software. As Louise Goffin said recently, “I got algorithm”.	And here’s Elektron telling you all about it.
The synth resurgence is gigantic, and of course has taken over Top 40 radio as well as much of rock radio. The fans now have their own Moogfest to bathe their ears in synthy goodness. Notice the top of this poster, that this festival scored an appearance by Gary Numan. FMQB saw Gary Numan live last year. We thought maybe he was gonna come in and do the 20-minute extended version of Cars and leave. It did not go down that way. From the first 30 seconds, he was blowing us clean away. The rumors that the guy is a genius turned out to be true. Moogfest, Dunham North Carolina, May 19-22. If you’re in the area, be there, and tell us what you think.	When analog synthesizers first hit the musical world, it was a sonic explosion felt around the world. Then they became difficult to obtain. Here’s a history of one of the key figures in their development.	The remote truck recording studio looks very interesting. They have a big clientele list. (See interior photos and their enormous list of world-class producer and artist clients at www.lemobile.com and press on the tape transport control buttons at the bottom of their homepage to get to these lists.)
After Louise Goffin made the rounds of the electronic hardware and software, the digital and the analog, and the top mixing engineers and producers in the world, she decided to take it old-school, unplugged, and acoustic. She couldn’t resist the urge to start actually playing the stringed instruments.
I’m a fan of Kala ukuleles. They are an artist friendly & personable company. At NAMM there was more variety in ukuleles and even uke banjo’s than I’d ever seen anywhere. They are also making some beautiful vintage-looking uke hard cases. It was quite a tour of NAMM 2016. And we learned something from Louise Goffin. You can have all the technology you want, but it’s the inspiration coming from the person that makes something special happen. And that is a message that this industry should hear right now.

“It’s never too soon or too late to write a song.” — Louise Goffin

Enjoy these links relating to Louise Goffin — We’ve custom-curated a mini-concert by Louise Goffin for you in here:

American Songwriter:
Louise Goffin « American Songwriter

Louise Goffin will release Songs From The Mine, her first album in six years, on July 15. We spoke to the daughter of songwriting legends Carole King and Gerry Goffin about recruiting Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp for her record, her songwriting heroes, her thoughts on the perfect song and more.

What’s really sick about this list is that as brilliant as the songs are, we left a great many of the best ones out. Some of them have been released, and some of them…well y’all gonna have to wait awhile longer. And oh yeah, by the way…Louise Goffin is just getting warmed up. We know for a fact that as recently as two days ago, she was cooking up some more songs.
LG: The future is staring back at us.
Northern Lights:

Northern Lights — Louise Goffin, master of crafting the Beatles-level pop melodies in the verses and chorus, winds up rocking the end like Hendrix.

Lookout Mountain

Mixed by Greg Wells. Amazing.

More Of It

Louise Goffin rapping and bending your brain in 7/8

Bad Little Animals

We can’t stop singing it. It’s almost like Fleetwood Mac meets Smashing Pumpkins

Hurt People

Experimental, achingly beautiful, achingly raw, emotional and honest, about the only thing we can compare this song to is something by John Lennon. You won’t be hearing this on Top 40, but Louise Goffin has no boundaries and cannot be confined to the ordinary:

We Belong Together

Goffin exuberantly rocks the house and delivers the goods. You’re gonna get hooked on this one, this is the crowd-pleaser right here

Miss You

Your summer is complete with uptempo fun hooks. Goffin hits it outside the lines, hear her go sonically nuts. It’s a good day to be yourself. Crazy synthy goodness in the middle

A Trip To the Moon

(Louise Goffin producing and co-write — artist: January Malkus Soundcloud) — Top 40 electropop dance style with killer hooks and lyrics

I’m Not Rich But I’m Not Poor

This track exploded in mid-2015 on Soundcloud, with geometrically increasing listens, currently over 83,000. Gorgeous music by melodic master, Grammy-nominated Louise Goffin, lyrics by her father, the legendary Gerry Goffin. She wrote this music when she was 20. It’s mind-boggling, we don’t know too many 20 year olds that could do that. Produced by Louise Goffin with very beautiful strings arranged by Lee Curreri

If I’m Late with guest Joseph Arthur

Written by Louise Goffin’s parents, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, this song wound up lost in the archives and was never released until Louise produced this version with guest singer and alt music favorite Joseph Arthur, who was a major breakout artist in 2015. This is the only song on this list not written or co-written by Louise Goffin, but she’s so good on this, we just had to show it to you

Saved By the Bell (live)

We wanted to throw in a few live songs, even though there’s a beautiful record of this which Louise Goffin made. Ethereal, deep and moody, this song is going to put you into an entirely different space. The music is coming from off, somewhere else. We think it’s stunning. On the record it’s done with beautiful strings. Here is a live 2015 version with Louise Goffin playing solo at the piano.

New Year’s Day

A live performance re-arranged for solo electric guitar, originally appeared on a Grammy-nominated album produced by Louise Goffin. Co-written by Louise with smash hit songwriter Guy Chambers, who has been involved in 52 gold/platinum certified albums, and known for his work with Robbie Williams, James Blunt, The Wanted, and Tina Turner. This is Louise live in-studio at radio station KPFK in Los Angeles in 2015

Everybody But You

Absolutely beautiful melodies and production from the master of melody, Louise Goffin. Produced by Louise Goffin from her 2014 album Songs From the Mine. Also a beautifully produced video visually.

Watching The Sky Turn Blue

(backing vocals courtesy of Pink Floyd/Peter Gabriel/Alice Cooper producer Bob Ezrin’s Hollywood Vampires session, by Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper). Produced by Louise Goffin, from Songs From the Mine. More summertime fun, good for driving down the road. Don’tcha think it’s about time? We do, hell yeah. That’s Louise laying in those electric guitars.

Indiglo

Co-written, co-produced and co-performed by Louise Goffin and Art Alexakis from Everclear. Beautiful backing harmony vocals by Louise Goffin. Yet another great Louise Goffin pop melody, great lyric, we love it. By this point, you’re getting the picture. She’s got a lot of killer material, and is cooking up even more even at this moment.

Follow Your Heart

We thought we’d send you out with this one, it’s a fave of ours. A little bit country, Americana, kind of folky, pop, and something we think has an iconic feel. In life as in music, Louise Goffin always follows her heart. That’s how she got it this good. We hope you follow yours.

Contact information: KC Mancebo, manager, kcm@clamorhouse.com, 310-313-1738

Story by FMQB owner Mitch Rudman, and FMQB Special Correspondent Louise Goffin