Kevin Killen (born October 22, 1959) is a Grammy Award-winning Irish music producer, engineer, and mixer known for his work with recording artists including U2, Peter Gabriel, [1] Elvis Costello, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Jewel, Bon Jovi, Shawn Colvin, Shakira, and David Bowie. [2] [3]
Killen was studying sciences at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in 1979 when a friend told him that Lombard Sound Studios was seeking a trainee. The studio hired him, and was engineering within six months. Two years later, Killen left Lombard Sound to work at Windmill Lane Studios, where he worked for the next four years. [4] He first worked with U2 in 1982, assisting Steve Lillywhite on the band's 1983 album War . [4] His work with U2 continued with The Unforgettable Fire , working with the production/engineering team of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who Killen would again work with on Peter Gabriel's So . [5]
In 1991, Killen co-produced and mixed the original soundtrack to the popular music film, The Commitments .
Among Killen's more recent credits include, mixing Sugarland's multi-platinum Love on the Inside featuring three chart singles in "All I Want to Do", "Already Gone" and "It Happens", all Number One hits on the Billboard country singles charts. In 2014, he mixed Suzanne Vega's latest release Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles and recorded David Bowie's single "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" from his release, Nothing Has Changed .
Killen was awarded five Grammys for his contributions to Shakira's 2005 album Oral Fixation, Vol. 1 . [6] He has received Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Instrumental Category for his work on Allen Toussaint's The Bright Mississippi (2009) and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, for Seth Glier's The Trouble With People (2012).[ citation needed ] In 2013 he received a Juno Award for recording and mixing Johnny Reid's Fire It Up CD as Best Country Album.[ citation needed ] At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards held in February 2017, Kevin was awarded a Grammy for co-producing and mixing Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble’s Sing Me Home for Best World Music Album. In addition, he was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for David Bowie’s final studio album – Blackstar and a third Grammy as Blackstar took honour for Best Alternative Music Album.
Geoffrey Ernest Emerick was an English sound engineer and record producer who worked with the Beatles on their albums Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and Abbey Road (1969). Beatles producer George Martin credited him with bringing "a new kind of mind to the recordings, always suggesting sonic ideas, different kinds of reverb, what we could do with the voices".
Daniel Roland Lanois is a Canadian record producer and musician.
Anthony Edward Visconti is an American record producer, musician and singer. Since the late 1960s, he has worked with an array of performers. His first hit single was T. Rex's "Ride a White Swan" in 1970, the first of many hits in collaboration with Marc Bolan. Visconti's lengthiest involvement was with David Bowie: intermittently from the production and arrangement of Bowie's 1968 single "In the Heat of the Morning" / "London Bye Ta-Ta" to his final album Blackstar in 2016, Visconti produced and occasionally performed on many of Bowie's albums. Visconti's work on Blackstar was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical and his production of Angelique Kidjo's Djin Djin received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album.
Hugh Charles Padgham is an English record producer and audio engineer. He has won four Grammy Awards, for Producer of the Year and Album of the Year for 1985, Record of the Year for 1990, and Engineer of the Year for 1993. A 1992 poll in Mix magazine voted him one of the world's "Top Ten Most Influential Producers". Padgham's co-productions include hits by Phil Collins, XTC, Genesis, the Human League, Sting, and the Police. He pioneered the "gated reverb" drum sound used most famously in Collins' song "In the Air Tonight".
Stephen Alan Lillywhite, is a British record producer. Since he began his career in 1977, Lillywhite has been credited on over 500 records, and has collaborated with a variety of musicians including new wave acts XTC, Big Country, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Simple Minds, the Psychedelic Furs, Toyah, David Byrne, Talking Heads and Kirsty MacColl, as well as U2, the Rolling Stones, the Pogues, Blue October, Steel Pulse, the La's, Peter Gabriel, Morrissey, the Killers, Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Counting Crows and Joan Armatrading. He has won six Grammy Awards, including Producer of the Year, Non-Classical in 2006. In 2012, he was made a Commander of the Order of The British Empire (CBE) for his contributions to music.
Albert Harry Schmitt was an American recording engineer and record producer. He won twenty Grammy Awards for his work with Henry Mancini, Steely Dan, George Benson, Toto, Natalie Cole, Quincy Jones, and others. He also won 2 Latin Grammys, and a Trustees Grammy for Lifetime Achievement.
Ken Scott is an English record producer and engineer known for being one of the five main engineers for the Beatles, as well as engineering Elton John, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, David Bowie, Duran Duran, the Jeff Beck Group, Supertramp, and many more.
Novastar is a Belgian rock band led by Dutch-born singer-songwriter and guitarist/pianist Joost Zweegers. They are known for their emotional ballads, and the high pitch of Zweegers's voice. Zweegers has also released solo material under the name Novastar.
Tchad Blake is an American record producer, audio engineer, mixer and musician.
Michael Shipley was an Australian mixing engineer, audio engineer, and record producer. Shipley's music career spanned more than 30 years – mostly working in Los Angeles. At the Grammy Awards of 2012 he won the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category for his joint work on Paper Airplane, by Alison Krauss and Union Station. Shipley died in July 2013, aged 56, of an apparent suicide.
Bob Clearmountain is an American record producer.
Tom Lord-Alge is an American music engineer and mixer. He began his career at Unique Recording in New York. Subsequently, he was the resident mixer at what used to be known as "South Beach Studios", located on the ground floor of the Marlin Hotel.
Cold Mountain is the soundtrack for the Civil War film Cold Mountain (2003) starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renée Zellweger. The album was nominated for two Grammy Awards and was produced by T Bone Burnett. Two songs were nominated for Academy Awards: "You Will Be My Ain True Love", written by Sting, and "The Scarlet Tide", written by Burnett and Elvis Costello. Both songs were sung by Alison Krauss.
Nathan "Mick" Guzauski is an American multi-platinum mixing engineer and sound engineer. He has nine Grammy Awards and eleven nominations.
Dave Way is a Grammy Award winning American producer, mixer and audio engineer based in Los Angeles, California, United States. He has worked with Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow, Kesha, Pink, Iron And Wine, Fall Out Boy, Al Green, 21 Pilots, Yebba, Victoria Monet, Ben Folds, Christina Aguilera, Macy Gray, Rita Orta, Andra Day, Ringo Starr, Shakira, Phoebe Bridgers, John Doe, Savage Garden, Michael Jackson, Spice Girls, Norah Jones, Beck, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Babyface, Ziggy Marley, Weird Al Yankovic, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Gwen Stefani, Chris Botti, Jakob Dylan, Andrew WK, Foo Fighters, TLC, Guy, Toni Braxton, Boyz II Men, Kool Moe Dee, Heavy D. & The Boyz, Ayumi Hamasaki, Ronan Keating and many more. He is a four-time Grammy Award-winner as well as a songwriter and is co-writer of the number one single "I Like the Way " by the group Hi-Five (1991). He has mixed the score for the films Echo In The Canyon, Flag Day, Reminiscence, Stand Up Guys, as well as music for Sons of Anarchy, The Bastard Executioner, The Bodyguard, School Of Rock, Deepwater Horizon, True Blood, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Superbad, 50 First Dates, Teen Titans Go To The Movies, Spider-Man, White Men Can't Jump and others.
Tom Elmhirst is a British mix engineer. He has worked with artists including Adele, Beck, David Bowie, Cage the Elephant, Lady Gaga, Residente, and Amy Winehouse, among many others. Elmhirst has received numerous accolades and nominations. He has won sixteen Grammy Awards, a Latin Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Music Producers Guild Awards for Mix Engineer of the Year. Having won six trophies at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017, he set the record for the most Grammys won by an engineer or mixer in one night.
"Blackstar" is a song by English rock musician David Bowie. It was released as the lead single from his twenty-sixth and final studio album of the same name on 19 November 2015. "Blackstar" peaked at number 61 on the UK Singles Chart, number 70 on the French Singles Chart and number 78 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Blackstar" received both the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song and the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance at the 59th Grammy Awards. At 9:57, it was the longest song to enter the Billboard Hot 100 charts, overtaking Harry Chapin's "A Better Place to Be", until Tool broke the record in 2019 with "Fear Inoculum".
Blackstar is the 26th and final studio album by the English musician David Bowie. Released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday, the album was recorded in secret in New York City with his longtime co-producer Tony Visconti and a group of local jazz musicians: Donny McCaslin, Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre and Mark Guiliana. The album contains re-recorded versions of two songs, "Sue " and "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore", both of which were originally released in 2014. More experimental than its predecessor The Next Day (2013), the music on Blackstar combines atmospheric art rock with various styles of jazz. Bowie took inspiration from artists including Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips, listening to them during the album's production. The cover art, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook, features a large black star with five star segments at the bottom that spell out the word "BOWIE".
The 59th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 12, 2017. The CBS network broadcast the show live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The ceremony recognized the best recordings, compositions, and artists of the eligibility year, which ran from October 1, 2015, to September 30, 2016.
Rob Kirwan is an Irish record producer, mixing engineer and audio engineer based in Dublin, Ireland. He has worked with such artists as Hozier, PJ Harvey, Local Natives, U2, Depeche Mode, Editors, Glasvegas, The Courteeners, The Horrors, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Bell X1, Delorentos, Soulsavers, Soulwax and Sneaker Pimps.