Oh, you better believe it. Steve Greenberg is here on the podcast today. Steve signed Hanson after checking them out at a local county fair- there would be no Hanson as we know them if not for Steve. A former rep for Mercury Records, Steve now has his own label- S-Curve Records. Steve brings an hour of fun, laughs, enthusiasm and passion into this episode, his love for Hanson and the Middle of Nowhere era is undeniably contagious.
Tone Deaf:" Steve Greenberg, the executive producer on Hanson’s album Middle of Nowhere, was convinced that if the band were to fulfil the potential that Christopher Sabec, the band’s manager, first saw in them at SXSW, they’d need to have alt-cred.
“We were coming out of this alternative rock moment, and everything was about alternative cred. People were very skeptical that we could do a pop record,” Greenberg recently told Broadly, who’ve published an oral history on ‘MMMBop’.
Greenberg decided to assemble an alternative Justice League to spruce up the band’s indie credentials. Having recently heard an advance of Beck’s Odelay, Greenberg tapped the Dust Brothers to produce Middle of Nowhere.
“It was the Dust Brothers’ involvement that helped us achieve alternative cred,” said Greenberg. David Campbell, a composer who’d worked with Green Day and Hole, did arrangements for the album, and Tamra Davis (Sonic Youth, Veruca Salt) directed the ‘MMMBop’ video.
“Steve and I wanted to create a patina of hipness around a pop record. I think we picked exactly the right people,” said Mercury Records’ Danny Goldberg. “They didn’t try to make it like Nine Inch Nails or too hip. But they did add a hipness factor that smoothed the pathway to quick exposure in all aspects of the business.”
More about Steve's Podcast:
American Song Writer- " Grammy-Award winning Record Executive and Producer Steve Greenberg — the veteran music industry producer who helped launch the careers of Hanson, The Jonas Brothers, Joss Stone, Andy Grammer, AJR and many more — announced today the debut of “Speed of Sound.” The new iHeartRadio Original podcast explores how some of pop’s biggest songs, bands and musical genres soared to the top of the charts. From The Beatles to disco, “The Twist” to hip-hop and beyond, Greenberg examines the unique historical circumstances, technological advances and trends that helped create some of music’s most remarkable and unlikely success stories."