Name: Trevor Horn
Nationality: British
Occupation: Producer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter
Current release: For his new studio album Echoes – Ancient & Modern, Trevor Horn revisited some of his favourite songs. These include compositions he originally recorded himself as well as pieces penned and produced by other artists and colleagues. The selection features classics like "Slave to the Rhythm," "Relax," and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" as well as "Personal Jesus," "Drive," and "Avalon" – brought to life by vocalists like Tori Amos, Seal, Marillion's H, Iggy Pop, and Andrea Corr.

The album is out December 1st 2023 via Deutsche Grammophon. There is also a blu-ray version via Super Deluxe Edition with plenty of bonus content.

If you enjoyed this Trevor Horn interview and would like to stay up to date with his releases and productions, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



You're a songwriter yourself. Would you say that's been helpful in terms of communicating with artists?

I have always been quite upfront about that. On nearly every record I made I was part of the writing process to some degree. But I rarely asked for any of the publishing. Looking back, I should have done that. I was always worried that if I asked for some of the publishing, the artists wouldn't let me rewrite the song, that they'd think that I was doing it just for the publishing. So I was always very careful about it. But, yes, if the song isn't right, it doesn't matter however hard you try.

Take a song like “Crazy.”



“Crazy” was a really good song when Seal brought it to me. But it was still missing something. And it took a couple of months to figure out what was missing. In the end, we decided it was that bit where he goes “In a sky full of people.” That wasn't originally in the song. It was just an ad lib, you know, with him going, “badda badda badda ...” and I said to him at some point, why don't you write a lyric for that section? When he wrote the lyric for that section, it completed the song.

Sometimes you've also got too many bits in a song or it just isn't focused. In a way, making sure that it's focused is one of the most important things I can do. Sometimes that can be a dealbreaker. You know, sometimes people have wanted me to produce them and they sent me a tape and they'll tell me there's at least five singles there. And I listen to it and there isn't anything. And people can get quite angry if you say that. You know - “that's just your opinion.”

Well, you know, this is what I do for a living.

You've said that you would sometimes spend months on a single song. It seems like one of the main virtues for a producer and an artist is patience.

True, but I don't spend that amount of time on something unless I believed it was worth it - unless that song was going to change somebody's career. Again, “Crazy” is a good example, because we spent a long time on it. We had to follow a song that had got to number one, “Killer.” So I knew that we would have a big audience for the next single. But if it wasn't really, really good, we would also lose that audience.

“Crazy” was a great song, potentially, a really, really good song. Because the lyric was so good. “We're never going to survive unless we get a little crazy,” that was such a great lyric. I guess it was the same with “Kiss from a rose”. These were really important songs. So I was prepared to work hard to get the record right.

Whenever I think of “Crazy”, I actually think of that incredible drum break. But it's only a few seconds short.

Yeah, there is a lot to look forward to. I mean, that's the thing with all the records that I make, I try and keep them interesting, right to the end. Maybe sometimes that's a fault.

I always saw the record as a kind of like a roller coaster ride. You get on at the start and by the end of it, you should have enjoyed the ride. Sometimes these days, I wonder if anybody ever listens to music anymore?

When you get a song in its early, naked state, let's say a song like “Crazy.” Do you instantly have an idea for the arrangement? Will you know what it is that's missing?

Well, the only songs that aren't missing anything are songs written by very professional songwriters like Diane Warren. They'll make sure there's enough material for you to work with. But with most good songs, when you get them, there are bits missing.

I always look at it from a very simple point of view. You need three main ideas, and at least two secondary ideas. If you don't have that - all of that - it's going to be quite hard work. Somebody may send you a demo of a song and they're strumming two chords, like an A minor and an E minor on a guitar and you got to figure out we're gonna need some parts for this, you know. That's where it's important to have really good musicians around you.

What makes for a really good musician?

If you take a chord sequence like C Major, A Minor on the piano … That's a very common chord sequence. But if you've got a really good musician, they'll find a way of doing that chord sequence that's interesting.

Mind you, these days, there's no such thing as a demo. Back in the day, the demo was a version of the song recorded on an inferior format, generally. Because the cost of going into a studio was too high. I think nothing puts me off more than getting a demo that's had the hell produced out of it. I always say, “What do you want me to do? You've done it.”

The rawer the demo, the better. Because you know that any version that you do is going to sound better than that. Which is not something to be sniffed at.

So before you even think about producing a song, you first look at the composition.

What I always do is I learn a song. And then I play it and sing it. I internalise it while thinking: What does this need? If this were my record, would I be happy that it doesn't have a climaxt? How would I feel about doing this? Is it exciting? But the first thing is to learn the song and sometimes that takes you a little bit of time.

For somebody like Robbie Williams, I will first try singing the song myself and maybe I'll change it after I've tried it. I'll change the balance a little bit if I didn't like that it was too loud. I'll try and make the arrangement so that it works to sing over it.

For the song “Drive,” originally by The Cars, you discreetly changed the chords for your new version. Very few people do that – it's almost like you're taking the piece back to the drawing board.  

It's a tricky song to cover, because it's so familiar. The minute you play those chords, the chords on the original record, you can recognise the song. So I changed them. That's something I quite enjoy doing. There are always different ways that you can put different chords behind the front. All you have to do is listen back to big band music, they used to do a lot more of that back in the 50s.



For “Drive,” instead of keeping it all in major we made it a little bit more like “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” It's a beautiful song but I always found it very sad.

It was produced by Mutt Lange. and I met Mutt and I said to him: Mark, you know, when that song hits the chorus, you missed the harmony. Why didn't you do that harmony? And he said, “I did.” So I went back and listened to the record and, Jesus, I never heard it, but it is there.

it is an understated song. So it's easy to miss something.

Yeah, I just never realised it was there.

I saw it as being somebody with a girlfriend who drinks too much and gets out of control. And it's an awful feeling. So I could relate to it.

As you said, if a song is perfect, then there's no need for you to get involved. But for a project like Echoes, most of the songs are either quite close to perfection and many of them were produced by yourself.  So how does that work?

I really didn't want to go back “Slave to the rhythm” and “Relax.” But then I started messing around with “Relax,” and came up with the idea that it was going to be a female humanoid robot - a mechanical hooker to relax?

It's not that implausible.

I suppose so, it has that feeling ...

If you cover or rework a song, are there things that are off limits, or not permissible?

It's difficult to do “Slave to the rhythm” without using those beautiful chords in the chorus. Without them the tune is just dead. But if you put those chords behind the melody, it's absolutely beautiful. So I didn't change the chords on that one.



But I definitely, at times on this record thought, I'm never doing this again. Because the piece would more and more start to get like the original. And then I'd try to steer it away from that again.  

I mean, it was easy enough on something like “Drank,” because the original had no tune to it and was very much a full-on hip hop record. But for some of the others, it was tricky. For “Love is a battlefield,” I had a few different goes.

Do you think it's a sign of quality for a song if it makes lots of people want to perform it and record it themselves?

Yes. If you think about it, there are lots of songs that people like to sing … probably one of the most famous is “Danny boy.” All the Irish people love to sing it because it has a climax.

So yes, it's a mark of a really good song. If you look at somebody like Lou Reed, a lot of people do “Perfect day.” It's solid.



If someone else wants to give their take on it, it means you've established communication. Which is fascinating through the recorded medium.

It's a wonderful thing when it works. It just doesn't work very often. When I spent a long time on a record, it was because I believed that when I finished it, a lot of people would get it. But I wouldn't do that on something that nobody was really interested in.

The problem I have at the moment is finding a song that I would be prepared to put that time into. Having a lot of time doesn't guarantee anything. It just means you can figure out how to do it the best it can possibly be.