You’ll be able to’t choose a songwriter by their first hit. That’s actually true for Dan Wilson, who topped the charts and earned his first Grammy nomination with Semisonic’s 1998 earworm “Closing Time.”

Within the 27 years since that track’s launch, Wilson has written for a wide selection of artists, together with Adele, LeAnn Rimes, John Legend, Panic! on the Disco, Preservation Corridor Jazz Band, and Taylor Swift. He’s collected 4 Grammys and final yr received the CMA Award for Music of the 12 months for Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse.” He additionally obtained an Academy Award nomination for co-writing Jon Batiste’s “It By no means Went Away” from American Symphony.

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The prolific songwriter’s abilities stretch throughout genres. “I attempt to consider songs as ‘simply songs,’ with out style,” he says. “I grew up listening to and enjoying jazz, and so many jazz classics are songs that initially got here from different genres, like Broadway musicals or High 40 radio or Brazilian dance music. I’ve at all times favored the concept that songs may journey from one style to a different. Actually good songs are moveable.”

Whereas a lot of his time is spent in songwriting periods, Wilson has a Sunday night time ritual: sitting at his restored 1918 upright piano to “finish the week on a light be aware.” 

“It at all times comes again to the piano for me,” he says. “My musical beginnings had been at my dad and mom’ piano in Minneapolis. Once I was 10 or 11, I began determining learn how to make up easy songs. In my early teenagers, I taught myself to improvise on the piano. All through highschool, I’d cope with my feelings and anger and blues by expressing them on the piano. I can’t think about what that was like for my household! At this level, enjoying the piano at night time is a lifelong behavior of mine. Both a behavior or a lifeline.”

Wilson started posting quick items from these evenings to Instagram as a manner of claiming good night time to his adopted hometown of Los Angeles, naming every bit after streets tied to important moments in his life: “mulholland,” “beverly glen,” “moorpark,” “coldwater,” or as Wilson places it, a map of his time dwelling within the metropolis. Eighteen of these items now seem on good night time, l. a., an album that captures the quietude of Wilson’s Sunday nights and makes it transportable.

It’s revealing to see the 5 (plus one) songs Wilson credit with making him a songwriter, and the context by which they made a lasting affect on him. Almost half come from artists who had been his contemporaries in the course of the Semisonic years, and even earlier, throughout his time with the band Journey Shakespeare.

“At each stage of discovering myself as an artist I’ve taken a lot of cues from the music that was occurring on the time,” says Wilson. “That is in all probability as a result of since I used to be 11, I knew that I used to be going to be a musician. I noticed new data as half enjoyment and half studying methods to make music. Songs have at all times had deep connections to the instances of my life once I first heard them. Once I was a child, I found that songs are a time machine that may carry you again to an earlier chapter of your life.”

Reconnecting to the Semisonic time in his life, Wilson joins the band this summer time for tour dates, together with stops on the “Good Intentions Tour” co-headlining with Toad the Moist Sprocket and Sixpence None the Richer. 

“Coyote,” Joni Mitchell

“Coyote” on Hejira [1976] was my first introduction to Joni Mitchell, in all probability my most revered and most-listened-to songwriter. It has no refrain, simply a fast tag on the finish of every verse: “You simply picked up a hitcher, a prisoner of the white strains of the freeway.” The track indoctrinated me into the lifetime of a touring musician earlier than I even knew what it was. 

“Coyote” was additionally my first introduction to Jaco Pastorius, the superb bassist whose melodies are like a second voice on Hejira. This was what made me wish to study to play the electrical bass, and play it precisely like Jaco. Earlier than I switched to guitar, I performed bass in my highschool’s massive band, and in all my bands till I joined Journey Shakespeare.

“Purple Haze,” Jimi Hendrix

This track undoubtedly modified my life. It was the primary track I realized to play on the electrical guitar. I used to be 13. A guitar trainer at our native music store taught me learn how to play the major-minor ninth chord within the verses. So dissonant! So rebellious! So distorted! Most of my guitar riffs owe one thing to “Purple Haze,” even now. 

“Let Down,” Radiohead

OK Pc dominated my listening life all through the time I used to be recording Feeling Unusually Advantageous with Semisonic. When the band was recording a part of the album out within the countryside at Pachyderm Studio, we’d hearken to that Radiohead report all the best way on the market after which all the best way again on the finish of the day. 

There have been different, splashier songs on the album, however “Let Down” was the one which moved me probably the most. The unusual arpeggiated orchestra bells and guitar in a totally different time signature from the track created a dissonance that I couldn’t get sufficient of. It was like an itch that might solely be scratched by listening once more. What an incredible factor to do with a piece of music.

“Reside Eternally,” Oasis

I used to be ready to select up a good friend on the Minneapolis airport when this track got here on the radio. I can nonetheless keep in mind how thunderstruck I used to be. It was equal elements Beatles-y psychedelia, nasty distorted metallic, nursery rhyme melodies, and Intercourse Pistols punk rock vocals. I couldn’t consider what I used to be listening to. When it was over the DJ introduced it was by a British band known as. Oasis. What a horrible title! I assumed. Now after all I like the title and all the pieces else concerning the band between Undoubtedly Perhaps and Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.

“A Comment You Made,” Climate Report

I cherished Heavy Climate by Climate Report. I used to be simply stepping into jazz and blues music, and this report had each pop breakthrough hits and gnarly light-speed jams. Plus, it was filled with lovely bass melodies by the best electrical bassist of all time, Jaco Pastorius. However the track I saved coming again to was “A Comment You Made,” a attractive ballad that includes saxophonist Wayne Shorter scaling heartbreaking lyrical heights on the horn. The last coda with its relentlessly repeated rising melody—such rigidity—solely to out of the blue cease, and finish in a state of harmonic suspension. OMG. 

“Purple Rain,” Prince

What can I say, he’s Prince. He’s funky. However on this case, he’s a diva and a balladeer too. This track ought to be ridiculous. It’s over-the-top dramatic, no apologies. In the meantime, the track’s title is a pun on Prince’s favourite colour purple and his royal title (Purple Reign). Even sillier, the title is a lyric stolen from “Ventura Freeway,” the stoner traditional by the band America. And but all of us sang alongside and cried and screamed till the ultimate countless guitar solo lastly got here to an finish. 

To see our working checklist of the highest 100 best rock stars of all time, click on right here.