New platforms and ticketed online events have emerged as the music industry continues to innovate during this time.
To hear Brown describe the meticulous steps he took to re-record Teenage Dirtbag from scratch, click 'Listen' above.During the COVID-19 pandemic, concerts have moved online as artists, venues and other outlets create new ways to re-imagine the live-music experience as social-distancing practices are commonplace. "It would be nice if other artists were able to see by example - our example or anybody else's - that this is something that's possible, that they can take back ownership this way." So, yeah, it's totally worth it."īrown hopes his band's efforts, along with those of stars like Swift, might encourage other artists to take steps to regain control of their master recordings. "Now we have the proof that it existed once and it exists again and it's ours. "I didn't know what I was getting myself into when we started," he said with a laugh.īut looking back, he says he'd do it all again. At this point, Brown figures he's listened to Teenage Dirtbag at least 10,000 times. (Anthony Harvey / Getty Images)īrown estimates it has taken Wheatus two years to complete the re-recording process. Wheatus lead singer Brendan Brown says he hopes other bands are inspired to take back ownership of their masters by re-recoding them, just like he has done. So I had to take a lot of breaks doing that." "Re-singing Teenage Dirtbag and having to make the sort of vocal mistakes again was definitely the most dangerous part of it because you can permanently damage your voice, you know. "I wasn't a very good singer when I first recorded the album," he laughed. That meant recreating obscure mistakes in the original recording, like a badly-distorted snare drum artifact at the top of the chorus.įor Brown, it also meant painstakingly recreating his own vocals 20 years after the fact. You know … what if you don't get it right?" "It's incredibly nerve wracking to recreate something that people already know how it goes. When Wheatus headed into the studio to re-record Teenage Dirtbag - along with the rest of the album Wheatus - in 2016, they were determined to make the new version of Teenage Dirtbag as indistinguishable as possible from the original. (Anthony Harvey/Getty Images) Starting from scratch Wheatus lead singer Brendan Brown in 2001, one year after the release of Teenage Dirtbag. "We felt compelled to recreate them so that, if for no other reason, we could own a copy. "To lose your master as an artist, it's really, really, really bad," said Brown. Swift made the decision to recreate her early work in order to regain control of her back catalogue after her former record label sold the masters to her first six albums in 2019.īut while Swift's masters were ultimately purchased by an investment fund, in Brown's case, they simply went missing. Like Swift, Brown and his bandmates opted to recreate the track from scratch after because they no longer had access to the masters - the original multitrack recordings - to their self-titled 2000 debut album, Wheatus. "The journey does get a little weird," he told Day 6 with a laugh. The lead singer and founder of Wheatus recently went through the very same process with his 20-year-old hit song Teenage Dirtbag.
When Taylor Swift announced plans to re-record her early albums, Brendan Brown knew better than most what she was in for.
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