“I definitely don’t want to be famous at all,” he said. Blanco, who is decidedly private about his personal life for such an extrovert, insisted that releasing his own music was less a bid for midcareer stardom than an experiment to keep from getting bored. Blanco, who does not perform live, is part cheerleader ( à la DJ Khaled, but without screaming “ Benny Blanco!”), part social connector and part celebrity confidante - and yet mostly anonymous. Not quite an electronic D.J.-producer like Mr. “Every rap producer in the world does it,” he added. “Now I can be like, well, I’ll put it out, and I get to do it exactly how I want. “I have so many friends that are artists, and I work on so many songs, and sometimes it’s so hard to place them, even at my level,” Mr. Sheeran and featuring vocals from Halsey and Khalid. The first, “Eastside,” was released this month, written with Mr. Blanco is finally spending his cultural capital and cashing in some favors, inching toward name recognition with a run of singles credited to Benny Blanco that feature his big-time collaborators. The answer, it turned out, was more hits - but this time with his name in front. While the variety keeps him mostly stimulated, he said, “It got to the point where I was like, ‘What’s going to make me happy?’”
![joe bridges album tracklist joe bridges album tracklist](https://images.genius.com/3df7316fe8464b17fb62c42d7c970779.300x300x1.jpg)
Blanco oversees two labels, Friends Keep Secrets and Mad Love, under Interscope Records, and is just as likely to pop up in the credits of a SoundCloud rapper ( 6 Dogs, Trill Sammy) as with the Weeknd or Lana Del Rey. Blanco said, “and especially now with this Kanye stuff, my bucket-list dreams are pretty much checked off.” (For years, he’d kept a computer folder labeled “Kanye drums,” just in case.) “I’ve produced every song I want to produce, I’ve done it every way I want to do it,” Mr.
![joe bridges album tracklist joe bridges album tracklist](https://images.genius.com/7b65c4728bfb9be2ea85c85b1ed2d510.300x300x1.jpg)
Blanco, 30, lit up most describing his left turns: championing the understated British R&B singer Jessie Ware collaborating with the elusive-yet-ubiquitous pop specter Francis and the Lights his fruitful BFF status with Ed Sheeran and his recent, unlikely run of contributions to Kanye West’s five-album marathon. Luke and Max Martin - Britney Spears’s “Circus,” Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” and “I Kissed a Girl,” Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” - and took special pride in his run of smashes, post-apprenticeship, with Rihanna, Trey Songz, Maroon 5 and Iggy Azalea.īut Mr. With motor-mouthed enthusiasm, he reminisced about his feel-good, hands-in-the-air Top 40 anthems under the gurus Dr. Blanco rattled off the director’s commentary on his discography as he tried to explain how he’d gone from an anonymous teenage goofball from the suburbs to the preferred studio goofball of pop stars everywhere. Teeth freshly brushed, in a pajama-like outfit that doubles as his regular uniform - soccer shorts, vintage Cher T-shirt, an unruly Chia Pet shrub of curls, tangled gold chains, Fenty slides - Mr.
![joe bridges album tracklist joe bridges album tracklist](https://www.billboard.com/wp-content/uploads/media/joe-walid-azami-2014-billboard-650.jpg)
On a recent summer morning in his Manhattan apartment-slash-home studio, Benny Blanco, one of the most successful producers and songwriters in contemporary music, was scrolling through his own Wikipedia page, trying to remember all the hits that he’s made.