Louise Lynn Goffin has lived and breathed music since the day she was born. The lyrics she has sewn together through time cut right to the soul and captivate audiences with her heart-wrenching melodies and provoking lines. Thanks, in equal parts, to those musical notes and intonations that pour through her body and soul as well as her dedication, study, and innovation, Louise has built a unique career as a multi- instrumentalist, singer, composer, lyricist, and producer.
She recently produced Carole King’s first ever holiday album, ‘A Holiday Carole,’ which will be released by Hear Music/Concord Music Group on November 1st, 2011. The album’s 12 songs are a mix of well-chosen standards and newly written material. Goffin co-wrote three original tracks on the album, including the Latin-flavored “Christmas in Paradise,” on which she collaborated with Grammy-winners George Noriega and Jodi Marr, the sublime Goffin/Marr composition “Christmas In The Air,” and the deeply moving “New Year’s Day,” co-written with renowned songsmith Guy Chambers.
“As an experienced producer,” King remembers, “Louise’s first question to me as her artist was, ‘What songs do you like?’” After compiling a list of favorites, Goffin went on the hunt for more unusual tracks, coming up with tunes like William Bell & Booker T Jones’ Stax classic “Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday.” King puts her own indelible stamp on the music, lending it a special seasonal flair.
For King, the album’s emotional highlight is undoubtedly “Chanukah Prayer.” “Louise had the brilliant idea to take the Chanukah prayer that I learned from my parents, and they learned from their parents, and back through generations,” she explains. “She said ‘I want to record you singing that and I’m going to build a track around it.’” The result is a warm, jazz-inflected tune that brings together three generations on vocals: King, her daughter, and her grandson.
To highlight just a few of the early moments setting the stage for Louiseʼs career, she started by opening for Jackson Browne at the Troubadour when she was 17. From that exposure, she was given a record deal with Elektra-Asylum and released her debut “Kid Blue”. Touring America just one year out of high school, her road experiences were through the eyes of a teenager, doing what she most loved, playing music live with a band. Her follow-up was a natural progression of band-based arrangements on the album “Louise Goffin”. Later, her single, “Uptown Boys” appeared on the movie soundtrack to the first Cameron Crowe film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in which she was the youngest artist featured on the classic soundtrack. With some needed life experiences, during a four year break between records, it was the song “Fifth of July” that landed her a deal with Warner Brothers in England and she recorded the LP “This Is The Place”. With aching expression of the aftermath of a love affair, listeners were mesmerized by her lyrics woven with vibrant filmic imagery “walking through the ruins, confetti and cherry bomb pies – maybe we lost our innocence, maybe the smoke got in our eyes”. The VH1 classic video, filmed in Venice, Italy, of the song “Bridge of Sighs”, also appears on that record. When promoted in the States, Louise appeared on both The Today Show and Jay Leno.
After those successes, she took a break from recording and not content to rest on her recording artist role, and relying on her versatility, Louise took her talents on the road as a side- woman, playing electric guitar with one of the top iconographic bands of the time, Tears for Fears. Another unexpected appearance was her cameo in the Bryan Ferry video “I Put A Spell On You”, playing banjo in an all-female band.
In spite of her then-belief that her recording artist opportunities would be over with the influx of teen pop, and having become a mother and married, she still wrote songs and arranged music in her studio at home, and she forged a deeper layer to her writing with these new experiences. The demos that came out of that time won her a record deal with executive Lenny Waronker to Dreamworks. Louise released her critically acclaimed CD Sometimes a Circle on Dreamworks in 2002.
Louise Goffin has never rested on her parentsʼ success in music; she has paved her own path and found success due to her own ingenious talents and innovation. While Carole King may be her mother, it has been Louiseʼs independence that has dictated her journey, which has led her to become one of the truly inspiring producers in an age of music that is saturated with the hollow ambiguity of electronic-dominated, computer- controlled rhymes and rhythms.
They say music is cyclical. And itʼs beginning to move back around to the influences of the likes of Carole King and those of her generation. With Louise Goffin at the helm, one can only have a powerful sense of hope for the future of pop music and the lasting legacy that is being created today.