Silk Sonic Prepared for ‘An Evening With Silk Sonic’ Like Actors Prepare for Oscar-Winning Roles
Silk Sonic won big at the 2022 Grammy Awards. Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak took home Song of the Year and Record of the Year for “Leave the Door Open,” off of their debut, An Evening With Silk Sonic. It wasn’t too much of a surprise, though. Silk Sonic has taken great pains recording their music. They have a formula for success.
How Silk Sonic prepared for ‘An Evening With Silk Sonic’
Initially, Silk Sonic established what .Paak calls their “foundation — the Sixties, Seventies, the old school.” Listening to a single note of An Evening With Silk Sonic, it’s evident that the sounds of the 1970s deeply inspired the artists.
Mars told Rolling Stone, “I don’t know what year it is. I’m not looking at the charts. So we’d just come here every night, have a drink, and we play what we love.”
Rolling Stone wrote, “In order to re-create the Sixties and Seventies soul and funk atmosphere they were aiming for, Mars explains, they and Mars’ longtime engineer, Charles Moniz, ‘did the research’ to ‘get the right things, down to the skins on Andy’s drums. I’ve never realized till this album how much the right guitar pick matters. The right gauged strings. All this science kinda stuff.'”
After consulting veteran session guys about which gear they needed and reading old drumming magazines, Mars and .Paak “focused on emulating old-school playing styles and then recording them in a period-accurate way — just one or two mics on a bunch of musicians playing at once in the same room.”
.Paak said, “Those players back then were playing with such patience. The music we grew up with is heavy drums, bass smacking, so we got all the instruments but were still like, ‘Why doesn’t it sound right?’ Because we were f***ing bashing!”
Silk Sonic did what some actors do in Oscar-winning roles
The Grammy Awards and the Oscars have one thing in common; they choose the winners who wow them. There’s a technical aspect to selecting winners, of course, but that’s what it comes down to.
An actor or artist can wow voting committees in many ways, but one of the most popular is doing some major prep work. For instance, Jessica Chastain just won an Oscar for Best Actress. She did a tremendous job trying to be the most accurate Tammy Faye Bakker possible.
She bought the rights to Bakker’s life story 10 years ago and worked hard to portray Bakker in a more positive light. Chastain experienced an intense physical transformation, which she thinks caused permanent damage to her face. After Chastain overcame her fear of singing, she sounded just like the televangelist.
All of these factors wowed. They continue to at the Academy. According to the BBC, one in five (19%) of the best-actor Oscars have gone to performers playing a character based on a real person. Renée Zellweger (Judy) and Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose), and others have also found success in playing a real person.
Although, it’s worth pointing out that not all actors who portray real people get Oscars. The actors who receive Oscars do the prep work no matter the role and use it successfully in their portrayal.
Silk Sonic went above and beyond on their debut, An Evening With Silk Sonic. Mars and .Paak did what actors do for Oscar-nominated roles. They did the research they needed to make the album sound like it came out of the 1970s, going one step further. It’s helped them win so far.
The group used their formula successfully, unlike some at the 2022 Grammy Awards
On An Evening With Silk Sonic, Silk Sonic followed a formula just as many actors have done. Instead of prepping for portraying a real person, Silk Sonic has prepared for sounding old.
The New York Times writes that using this formula in the music industry is quickly becoming a trend. “There is no surer way for a young musician to acquire a quick coat of gravitas than an appearance on the Grammy Awards,” they wrote. “And there is no surer way for a young musician to speed the way to the Grammys than by already appearing to be old.”
Many other artists at the 2022 Grammy Awards tried and failed at this. Justin Bieber opened his performance of “Peaches” by playing piano, an unexpected move, the Times wrote, that felt like “a pointed ploy, or perhaps a plea.” Then, Lady Gaga oozed the 1930s in her tribute to her Love for Sale co-contributor, Tony Bennett.
However, along with Jon Batiste’s jazzy We Are, which won Album of the Year, the Times wrote that Silk Sonic was among the few who “nailed” an older aesthetic. So maybe they’re in store for more awards. We’ll have to see if Silk Sonic’s efforts on their debut will earn them another Grammy Award. An Evening With Silk Sonic won’t be eligible until next year.
