"Hack The Planet!" An Oral History Of Hackers' Soundtrack & Score

25 years after the cult classic's release, the film's director, composer, actors, costume designer and contributing musicians look back on the soundtrack’s emergence from a new wave of club music

|GRAMMYs/Sep 15, 2020 - 09:57 pm

Twenty-five years after the release of Hackers, two things outlived the time of crushed cans of Jolt cola, skateboarding megavillains, and Matthew Lillard's braided pigtails: the vibrant community of electronic music and rebellion against those attempting to shut down information. It’s a world where payphones are essential technology, floppy disks play into high espionage and Marc Anthony is a secret service agent. It’s a time when the four most predictable passwords were "Love, Secret, Sex and God." But truly unprecedented was Hackers' mercurial soundtrack and score, a beguiling coalescence that mirrored the face and sound of an era. Much like the hackers’ experience of breaking through societal barriers, the film’s music winds its way through a bramble of wires before reaching techno-nirvana. The synergy of hackers and a new wave of electronic musicians came together powerfully, pushing into new, undiscovered territory, and sharing in the discovery as a community. From The Prodigy’s "Voodoo People" scoring a first meeting to Massive Attack’s "Protection" soothing a romantic scene: the Hackers soundtrack was a rapturous primitive trip for outsiders who were insiders.

Hackers follows a crew of high schoolers led by a very young Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller (under the codenames Crash Override and Acid Burn) fighting against The Plague, a hacker turned corporate tech security expert framing the kids for his own malicious schemes. At the dawn of the internet as we know it, that meant visualizing the inside of a computer as buildings fading into circuit boards. Furious typing is matched with twisted synths, and breaking through firewalls is scored by opening up the ambient heavens a la the Math Lady meme.

Director Iain Softley and composer Simon Boswell’s conjurative imagination of what the present was and what the future could be fused invention and innovation, psychedelia, trip-hop, and electronics into a hallucinatory heroes’ journey. The film harnessed a burgeoning scene taking over the U.K. and Europe and introduced it to outsiders in the U.S. The music was so beloved that the film spawned three soundtrack releases, two of which included tracks inspired by the film. However, some of Boswell’s compositions and other songs used in the film remained unreleased—including a surprise appearance by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. That changes, though, with an upcoming Record Store Day release, a double-vinyl set in support of the film’s anniversary.

To honor the cult favorite film’s invigorating exploration of a musical movement on Hackers’ 25th anniversary, the film’s director, composer, actors, costume designer and several contributing musicians reflect on the soundtrack’s emergence from a new wave of club music, the film’s prescient themes, and the feeling of community within and resulting from Hackers.

The Birth of a New Rebel Music

Ian Softley, Director: I grew up being absorbed in music as much as I was with film. Growing up in London, music was everywhere. And then when I went to work in television in Manchester and Liverpool, I would see bands all the time, whether it was New Order or various blues bands or reggae. That was the first inspiration for me to write about music and I was really happy for Hackers to be a way of carrying that on. My assistant for the film, Gala Wright, was a sort of creative collaborator. I was listening quite broadly, but she would help out by suggesting tracks. The music supervisor, Bob Last, was looking out for bands that had more profile, hence Prodigy and Massive Attack.

Rob Birch, Stereo MC's: At the time it was [seen as] rebel music. It was the young years of this exciting wave of electronic music, which created what we have now.

Renoly Santiago, Actor, The Phantom Phreak: That music was just part of my everyday life. That era felt like the launch of what we today call electronic dance music, or EDM. Back then we called it dance music, or raver music. I really was like a club kid listening to house music.

Roger Burton, Costume Designer: I was very familiar with the electronic music scene in the U.K. and Europe, but then I went on a trip to N.Y.C. and got inspired by the club culture. The fetish and cross-dressing scene and all these subcultures fuelled my creative decisions, so Hackers is loaded with subtle fashion references that people still enjoy spotting.

Laurence Mason, Actor, Lord Nikon: Coming from New York, I've always been into the club scene and the fashion scene. Trip-hop, acid house, rave, tribal, all this music has a primitive element to them, a universality speaks to everyone. They weren't using traditional instruments, but they did still have that primal thing. And then of course Iain definitely brought some of the ‘60s psychedelic into it, which was going on as well. I actually even helped with security for [Stereo MC’s] first appearance in New York City. I grew up with Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Deep Purple, so for me to rebel, I got into Prodigy, Tricky and Massive Attack. I've always been into science-fiction. I was a big fan of William Gibson and cyberpunk.

"Original Bedroom Rockers"

Paul Hartnoll, Orbital: I was raised by wolves! I taught myself in the backwaters of the middle of nowhere in Kent. [Laughs.] We had no idea what we were doing. I was into electronic music, and back then you just decided to copy what you like. You might have completely the wrong equipment, but you don't know that, so you get it done anyway and it ends up sounding different. If people ever say, "How'd you get your original sound?" I say, "I tried to copy other people and got it wrong." People always think I'm joking when I say that, but I'm not.

Peter Kruder, Kruder & Dorfmeister: It's actually just bedroom producers on the Hackers soundtrack. Everybody who's on that soundtrack literally made their music at home, from Orbital to Prodigy. It's probably one of the first movies that just had music made at home. We literally learned everything by doing it ourselves because there was no internet to learn from. We did everything by trial and error. It was a lot of work and a lot of hard stuff to learn in order to sound like other records. Most acts at that time were doing everything themselves. Everybody had their own label. We were always sharing information with other people, meeting at clubs or festivals. It was always an open community helping each other. That vibe stayed with people from that generation.

Richard Dorfmeister, Kruder & Dorfmeister: We actually lived in the studio. We were all like bedroom producers, just constantly programming and doing music. We were very dedicated and motivated by the fact that it was possible to do something without going to the studio, just to do it yourself with this electronic bedroom revolution.

Simon Boswell, Composer: I started composing in 1985, around the same time synthesizers and samples were becoming the thing for DJs. So, technologically, that’s what I was doing all the way through. It was actually something of an accident that I got to be a film composer. I'd been in various bands from punk time onwards. I was in a band that was less punk and more pop and toured with Blondie, but we weren't very successful. None of the bands I was in were very successful, so I became a record producer. I was working in Rome, producing Italian pop stars and rock stars, and was introduced to a horror director called Dario Argento at a party. He had seen my band play in Rome and asked me to help out on this first soundtrack, which was a movie called Phenomena. And it just went from there.

It's not normal that the film composer gets hired earlier on, but Iain knew me. So I went down to the studios just outside London where they were filming. I passed Angelina Jolie in the corridor and I stopped to introduce myself. I said the most stupid thing I've ever said: "Oh hi, pleased to meet you. I really love your dad's work." And she just looked me up and down and walked off because she and John Voight weren't getting on. [Laughs.] Also, Johnny Lee Miller owes me more than one beer. He got cast in Trainspotting because of me. Danny Boyle came down to set because I'd worked with him before, on Shallow Grave.

A Timeless Trip Through A Cyber Hallucination

Softley: My first film was called Backbeat, and music was hugely important to that because it was partly about the Beatles in Hamburg. We had a great soundtrack for that, with Don Was producing and an amazing grunge supergroup with Dave Grohl, Mike Mills, Dave Pirner, Thurston Moore and Greg Dulli. So when Hackers came next, we had a screening with a number of record companies where we had early cuts of the film and they were like, "We thought it was going to be indie guitar music, grunge. Nobody in America listens to techno." And I said, "Well, that's the music that's right for the movie. It's a cyberpunk movie trying to anticipate the internet as a sort of equivalent for that generation’s rock and roll." The music had to be futuristic and ambient. The film was sort of like a cyber hallucination in the minds of the people involved and the music was completely integrated with the storytelling of the film. And the more time passed, then the more people realized that and those bands started to become more famous.

Mason: Iain’s love of music fueled everything, but it didn’t end there. I went to meet Iain in New York and I guess I got lucky because there was a newspaper on the seat next to me on the train ride there, and there was a story about some Nigerian hackers pulling scams. So, I think I actually had something intelligent to say while I was there. It was serendipitous. But Iain cast it perfectly. He knew exactly who we were or at least who we could be and he put those colors or those flavors together. Training-wise, we had some hackers help us at least make it look like we knew how to type and we had a New York Rangers professional hockey player teach us how to skate. None of us, aside from maybe Matthew Lillard, could skate at all.

Santiago: Iain also gave us copies of the book Neuromancer and talked about the outlandish costuming and sense of genre in the film Brazil. He would talk a lot about music and the effect of music on culture. To him, Hackers was like "finding the new rock and roll," which I think really correlates to the soundtrack.

Softley: There was that searching for new frontiers, a mix of music and technology. The idea for the film was that it was like they were in a band, so we actually put guitar straps on their laptops.

The film is a technological trip in many ways, like a hallucination, a fantasy world of data and technology. The costumes reflected that and I wanted music that evoked that sense of being transported. It's very dreamlike in many ways, as well as an amazing driving dance that takes over your whole body. That combination has been consistent with house music over the years. You have these bass beats that vibrate through your body, but then laid on top of that is this almost orchestral, hymn-like, mercurial, mysterious nature. Even the older people that were involved in the early days of the internet had been the hippies in San Francisco. I also went with the designer and the costume designer to [London nightclub] Ministry of Sound.

Burton: At the time, the internet was relatively new and unknown to most people, and I became interested in it through Wired magazine, as well as the growing electronic music scene and club fashion particularly in London and N.Y.C. I envisaged this exciting underground movement of hackers who lived by their own rules and dressed in an eclectic array of styles that were drawn from many different subcultures and zine and pop culture references, but were somehow timeless.

Santiago: They wanted to go far-fetched with the costumes, but now even the stuff we wore looks a lot more normal. For instance, the leopard suit I wore! Guys hardly ever wore that. You might've seen leopard on Rod Stewart or maybe Mick Jagger. But there were some people that dressed that way and still do, so we were celebrating that. The whole cast went out to the club together, and then another time we went to a Pink Floyd concert. David Gilmour was involved in the soundtrack and he did such a beautiful job. Even Marc Anthony came along to the concert. We sat in the V.I.P. section and went to a party afterwards.

"I'm Gonna Get Myself Connected"

Boswell: For almost 10 years before Hackers, I’d been doing electronic scores more in the vein of Tangerine Dream. Iain and I both realized that my film music was converging on this new kind of club scene or rave scene in the U.K. And when he asked me to do Hackers, he was going out to clubs and really quickly picking up on the EDM music scene. Iain was playing me all of this stuff by the Prodigy, Orbital, Underworld, all of this quite aggressive but moody EDM music.

Alex Paterson, The Orb: I looked at the soundtrack, and it was a bunch of mates of mine from the clubbing days back in London. We never really got picked up to do film scores. We’ve never been able to be pigeonholed, and that’s the fun of the game for me.

Kruder, Kruder & Dorfmeister: We heard about the film’s story and it sounded like a pretty good idea. We prefer things that are a little off and this idea was a little bit off because it was probably the first movie that put nerds on a higher level and celebrated being a nerd.

Jesse Bradford, Actor, Joey: I don't tend to rewatch movies that I'm in, but I avidly listened to the Hackers soundtrack from 15 to 17 years old. Growing up in semi-suburban Connecticut, it was a great compilation of the emergence of a new style of music, early electronic or whatever a devotee would choose to call it. At the time I remember listening to the Prodigy and it made me feel, amongst my peers, like I caught wind of something a little early, something inspiring.

Birch, Stereo MC’s: When we were asked if we'd be up for putting the song on the soundtrack, we had a vague idea of what the movie was about. At that point, I didn't have a computer and I didn't really know much about the internet. I thought hacking was something the government and the police did. Let's face it, they were all doing it as much as anyone else was—and they still are. We used to have our recording studio in the living room. Nick [Hallam] would be watching TV with his girlfriend and I'd have the headphones on, putting beats together. We just couldn't get an idea for the verses and all of that. There were those race riots in America, when Rodney King had been brutalized by police officers, and we finished it at the same time as that. That was in the atmosphere when we made that record. It was a very unsettled social climate.

Boswell: No one knew what hackers were really, but subsequently so many people have come up to me, saying, "Oh, Hackers was my favorite movie. I grew up with that film!" And many of them are nerdy programmers who told me they liked that my music was quite psychedelic because they used to take acid and do programming. When we go inside the computer in the film, I was using backwards guitars, strange psychedelic electronic music. I got to use my favorite sounds I've loved ever since the '60s, which is the Mellotron sound in "Strawberry Fields Forever." I had to tie these different acts together and give the movie some emotional heart. My job was to make you care about these kids. Film music is the consciousness of a movie. That gives it a resonance, a depth. My job was also to make some of the drama and the darkness of the bad guys in it. Most of the soundtrack with those bands is kind of what you imagined the kids were listening to. My job was to be the stuff they weren't listening to, but more like what they were feeling. There are really cheesy moments in Hackers, which is probably why people like it as well [Laughs], but it was incredibly prescient in its vision of the future.

Hartnoll, Orbital: Hackers came along at the same time as we got asked to do a piece of music for the very first PlayStation system for a game called Wipeout, which they'd feature in the film. [Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller] play a kind of souped up, fictitious version of it. Hackers was one of the early adopters, a film that wasn't afraid to use dance music in the score. Up until that point we complained that even though dance music was sweeping the world, film music was really old-fashioned. I created "Halcyon" after a big Saturday night out. On Sunday I was sitting around drinking and smoking with friends around my house, where my little studio was. I just said to someone, "I'm going to have a go at making a pop song." It was all done on a 909 drum machine, an R-8 drum machine, a Korg Wavestation, the Yamaha DX100 for the bass line, and an Emax 2 sampler. I sampled Kirsty Hawkshaw from the beginning of "It’s A Fine Day" by Opus III, because she was a friend of mine and we'd always said we'd do a track together. And then my friend Paul Isaac said, "Why don't you turn that voice backwards?" and we both said, "Oh, that's really good. That's good."

"Halcyon" is quite seductive in a friendly and all-encompassing way. It’s one of those instrumental, abstract tracks that really affects people, especially with its slow, ambient lovely beginning. Hackers starts off with a sad moment, but then it comes in with the beat and you think, "Yeah, maybe there's some hope here."

Kruder, Kruder & Dorfmeister: All our tracks took pretty long to do, in general, because it was rather difficult to get the songs the way we wanted them. That whole way of working was difficult. Now I can make a beat in five minutes, but back then you had to set the record, cut it up, and loop it, and each step took a million years. And then you went through the whole process, and sometimes you found out that it didn't really work and you had to scrap it and start again. But we really enjoyed it. It was a challenge to conquer the instruments that we used and to make things sound proper and professional.

Mason: One thing that I thought worked really well was the last cut, by Squeeze, with Johnny and Angie in the pool. It's such a special moment, and a departure from the rest of the soundtrack. Obviously those two were deeply in love at that point. Who knows how much acting was involved. It's just very sweet. It's these two outsiders that found each other. These weren't the mainstream kids, the in-crowd. It's hard being a young person, but if you can find your tribe, you can have a good life and you look at things a little differently.

Softley: We did a limited soundtrack to accompany the U.K. release, which was about six months after the U.S. release. Those acts already had a following in the U.K. so that made a lot of sense. But for some reason we weren't able to get the rights for the tracks that Guy Pratt did with David Gilmour. We're thrilled that that's now on the re-release for Record Store Day. And also for the first time we will have an album that's released on double-vinyl, and it has great art that accompanies it.

Angelina Jolie (left) and Jonny Lee Miller (right)
Photo courtesy of IMDB / MGM

Every Generation Has Its Tribe

Mason: It is a movie, at its very essence, about youth. Each generation that sees it, it speaks to them. It just taps right into that spirit. All I can do is smile. I just feel very lucky I got to be a part of it. People constantly ask me, "When is number two coming out?" And I say, "Ask Angie." [Laughs.] Cause we're all still here, thank god. I mean, they should hurry up! It's still very relevant and a sequel would do really well.

Softley: I attended this technology and techno festival that was full of people that are high up in these multimillion-pound companies, and many of them said they were hugely influenced by Hackers or they associated with it. It felt like somebody was understanding who they were. And they turned up at the festival dressed like Acid Burn, with piercings and tattoos and crop tops and spiky hair.

Burton: Like Rebel Without a Cause, it deals with teenage angst that kids of that age can still really relate to—in fact so much so that even 25 years on I still receive regular emails and fan mail about it.

Boswell: The film [gained a cult following] because it didn't conform. That's probably why it wasn't successful at the time as well. It was such a brave new world. A lot of people just didn't get it. It wasn't familiar to them. They thought, "Who the f**k are these kids? What are they doing?" They weren't a subculture that most people were familiar with. The story does work on a thriller level. The thing about Hackers was it was quite brash and fresh, a history lesson.

Bradford: The fact that it’s held up so long says a lot about the vision of the people that wrote it and conceived it, from director to soundtrack to costumes. In other words, maybe Hackers showed up at the right time, sort of like the Sex Pistols relative to punk music, to help define what that look was going to be. If you get in early enough, you help define something.

Birch, Stereo MC's: Although some electronic music has been absorbed into the corporate mainstream, the vast majority of good electronic music is still being made outside of the corporate mainstream. Most of the musicians and artists, even quite well known ones, still release on underground labels. People that are making electronic music still exist on the boundaries. They're still outsiders, even if a lot of people want to hear them. Most people that are involved in dance music, the whole vibe of it is very much one of consciousness. We're still outsiders.

Mason: Every generation has their tribe. And for the ‘90s, because the technology was really starting to kick off, there were some people ahead of the curve—and those are usually the leaders, whether it's music or fashion. All young people are about freedom and rebellion, and the added thing is the hackers were also about freedom of information, and that might've been a new element to a very common generational thing. We want to be free. We want to rebel against the powers that be, and you actually can't do that without information. I look at today and I'm so proud of these young people protesting. It just reminds me that there's always something to rage against.

How 1995 Became The Year Dance Music Albums Came Of Age

Interview

Jammed Together With Steve Cropper: The Guitar Legend On 'Friendlytown,' Making His Own Rules & Playing Himself

Steve Cropper reflects on his decades-long career, his 2025 GRAMMY nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album and the enduring influence of Stax Records.

|GRAMMYs/Jan 30, 2025 - 03:30 pm

The 2025 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 67th GRAMMY Awards, will air live on CBS and Paramount+ on Sunday, Feb. 2. Watch highlights from the 2025 GRAMMYs on live.GRAMMY.com.

The 2025 GRAMMYs telecast will be reimagined to raise funds to support wildfire relief efforts and aid music professionals impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles. Donate to the Recording Academy's and MusiCares' Los Angeles Fire Relief Effort To Support Music Professionals.

Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted before the onset of the wildfires in Los Angeles.

is still "selling energy" — putting forth what a younger generation might call blues rock "vibes" with his pals as if it were still 1970.

This ethos dates back to his time at the legendary Memphis label Stax Records, where Cropper served as a songwriter, producer, engineer and A&R. Crucially, Cropper was the guitarist in Stax's house band, Booker T. & The MGs — they of "Green Onions" fame — and backed artists including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Carla Thomas. Among his many bonafides, Cropper co-wrote Redding's "(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay."

In his post-Stax years, the two-time GRAMMY winner and nine-time nominee produced and played on sessions with Jeff Beck, Jose Feliciano, John Prine, John Cougar, and Tower Of Power. He later joined Levon Helm’s RCO All-Stars group and was among the original members in Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi's Blues Brothers band. Cropper resumed his solo career in the '80s, releasing several albums, while continuing to collaborate with leading lights like Paul Simon, Ringo Starr, Elton John and Steppenwolf.

Steve Cropper has stayed true to himself for over seven decades, thanks in no small part to advice from Stax founder Jim Stewart. "He said, 'Just play yourself and if they don't like it, they'll tell you,'" Cropper tells GRAMMY.com. "So I've been playing myself all my life and it's worked out. That's pretty cool."

At the 2025 GRAMMYs, Cropper is nominated in the Best Contemporary Blues Album Category for the aptly named Friendlytown, recorded with a mix of long-time collaborators and a few newer faces, together billed as Steve Cropper & the Midnight Hour. Friendlytown's 13 tracks are familiar, digestible and straight-ahead rockin' — the kind of tunes you'd be thrilled to hear in a local dive. Featuring ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Queen guitarist Brian May, singer Roger C Reale, and guitarist Tim Montana, Cropper co-wrote and co-produced all of Friendlytown with bassist Jon Tiven.

"Steve's guitar playing on the song 'Hurry Up Sundown' is probably some of his best solo work and rhythm work," Tiven says. "It's amazing that at this point in his career, he could still be creating some of the greatest music of his life. I think that's a wonderful testament to the strength of his talent."

Meet Me At The Friendlytown Trader Joe's

There was very little methodical music-making behind Friendlytown, which partially grew out of sessions Cropper put together for his 2021 album Fire It Up. "This record was just about a bunch of guys getting together and having some fun. It's just like, Let's have a blast and try to make the party come to the record, rather than the record come to the party," Tiven notes.

Cropper and Tiven had been working on songs for years with the hopes of finding friendly musicians to give them life. While some found homes, the duo sat on instrumentals for years — until Tiven ran into Billy Gibbons at Trader Joe's. When Tiven told the sharp-dressed man he was making a record with Steve Cropper, "He just lit up like a firecracker and said he'd like to bring us a song. I said, 'Well, it's only going on the record unless you play on it.' And he said, 'Well, that could be arranged.'"

Gibbons ended up on 11 tracks; Friendlytown marks the first time he and Cropper worked together in many years. The ZZ Top vocalist's influence is audible on the album, particularly the title track and Eliminator-esque "Lay It On Down."

In Session At Stax

While casual may be the name of Cropper's game these days, "it definitely wasn't 35, 40 years ago," he says. Back then (and largely before, as Cropper left the label in 1970), making music was "was very serious, and I don't even think the guys had a good time." With a laugh, Cropper recalls his best friend, the Stax bassist/MG Duck Dunn, pining for a world in which "Jim Stewart would've only smiled every now and then."

While Cropper calls Stewart "the greatest guy I've ever met," the label head was known to be critical. "He knew if you fought for something, like a song, that it was a good song. And if you didn't fight for it, it wasn't worth nothing," Cropper says, chuckling. "He was right. I think about that all the time, but I don't use it. A songwriter could tell me how good a song they wrote is, but if I don't like it, I don't like it. I'm sorry!. I'm sure I've thrown away some good ones before."

A young Cropper put up a couple of fights, and for good reason. He recalls stumping for Wilson Pickett's "Ninety-nine and a half": [Jim Stewart said] "You boys was out there woodsheddin’. That song ain't going to make it." Cropper pressed it, and Stewart relented. The track made the cut for Pickett's 1966 album The Exciting Wilson Pickett.

Another big Stax hit stayed on the shelf for nine months while Cropper and co. battled it out with Stax brass. "Finally Al Bell went to Jim and said, 'You got to put this record out. It's called ‘Knock on Wood.' And Jim says, 'Okay, but you got to use your own money,'" Cropper says. "He hated that record until it was a hit."

Reflecting on the hardest song he's ever played, Cropper quickly points to Sam and Dave's "Soul Man." But the 1967 smash isn't difficult for the reasons you might think: the guitarist had to balance a Zippo lighter on his leg during sessions and performances, which he used to mimic the song's opening horn line. "I always had to dance [when recording] with Sam and Dave, because they could hit a groove. A lot of guitar players don't know that I played with a Zippo lighter and I'd slide it," he recalls.

Cropper reportedly hated the sound and feel of new guitar strings — something, he says, is no longer the case in old age — and in a lip-smacking good tidbit of studio lore, explained how he managed his unique sound. "I carry a thing of ChapStick all the time and I would go up and down the strings; [that would] take about three months out of the string so it would sound like the rest of them."

Sittin' On A Legacy

After decades in the business, it seems as if Cropper – though ever a professional – doesn't take himself or the creative process too seriously. He jokingly shares a reccolation from a studio session during his Stax years: Once the session was finished, Cropper told the group "Damn, this sounds like a hit." "And Al Jackson said, 'Steve, they're all hits until they're released.' He's probably right."

One of Stax's reliable hitmakers was a close friend of Cropper's: Otis Redding. The two shared a deep musical bond and some shared history. Both musicians grew up on farms ("By the time I was 14, I was ready to leave the home. By the time I was 16, I was gone in my mind," Cropper notes) yet the guitarist describes Redding as "most streetwise person that I ever met. I think he just had it. It came natural to him."

Redding played guitar with one finger and you "never argued with Otis" — especially because he was never available for sessions for more than a day or two. Most Otis Redding albums, as a result, were compilations from different sessions.

"I remember we cut 'I Can't Turn You Loose' in 10 minutes," Cropper says. "[When we recorded] Otis Blue, we had everybody come back at 1 [a.m.] -- after they did their gig and they went home and had their shower – so we could cut it."

Cropper knew that "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay" — arguably Redding's biggest hit, and Cropper's first GRAMMY win — was a hit. "You know why I knew it was a hit? Because we had Otis the longest I'd had him; for two weeks."

The gentle lull of "Sittin'" was a radical departure from Redding's Southern soul bombast, and perhaps a sign of what was to come if the singer hadn't died tragically in a plane crash. "That one song, we searched for a long time. We call it crossover music; so it could go either way:, R&B, pop, whatever. That was the first one we ever had," Cropper says.

There's Always A Catch

Steve Cropper is still going strong at 83 years old. He reports that he enjoyed HBO's recent Stax Records docuseries, and has an unfinished instrumentals album in the can. He hasn't time for regrets, only dreams, but the name of the one person Cropper wishes he had worked with fires off like lightning: Tina Tuner.

Cropper saw the late legend three times. "I really did admire Tina. She was the closest person to Otis, I think, in the business. It's the yeller, screamer, but everybody loves their music. She was so good, it didn't matter how it was she's yelling and screaming," he says.

Tina Turner's loudest albums still have melody and something "people will walk away humming" — the very thing Cropper loved about Stax records. "We were selling groove and all, rather than the music," Cropper says of his work with the MGs. "We don't care about the music. We just cared about melody and what's in the simplicity of the song."

2025 GRAMMYs: Performances, Acceptance Speeches & Highlights

List

12 Left-Of-Center Christmas Songs: Cyndi Lauper, Snoop Dogg, The Vandals & More

Tired of the same-old Christmas classics? This playlist of outside-the-box Christmas songs is filled with fresh aural holiday cheer

|GRAMMYs/Dec 17, 2024 - 12:45 am

Editor's Note: This article was updated with a new photo and YouTube videos on Dec. 16, 2024.

When it comes to holiday music, you can never go wrong with the tried-and-true classics.

Who doesn't love Nat "King" Cole's "The Christmas Song," Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas," Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," Charles M. Schulz's GRAMMY-nominated A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, or any new version of a festive favorite?

Even so, it's always good to get out of one's comfort zone. With that in mind, unwrap these 12 outside-the-box Christmas songs, spanning rock to rap and featuring everything from refreshing spins on the familiar to unexpected holiday thrills.

This firsthand account of spending the most joyous holiday locked up and separated from the one you love offers a different kind of longing than the average lonesome Christmas tune. In signature John Prine style, "Christmas In Prison" contains plenty of romantic wit ("I dream of her always, even when I don't dream) and comedic hyperbole ("Her heart is as big as this whole goddamn jail"), with plenty of pining and hope to spare.

"Christmas In Prison" appeared on Prine's third album, 1973's Sweet Revenge, and again as a live version on his 1994 album, A John Prine Christmas, which makes for perfect further off-beat holiday exploration.

When it comes to gloriously tasty six-string instrumentals, no one does it better than GRAMMY-winning Texan Eric Johnson. For his take on this timeless Christmas carol, the "Cliffs Of Dover" guitarist intermingles acoustic-based lines, sublime clean guitar passages and Hendrix-y double-stops with his trademark creamy violin-like Strat lines. The result is a sonic equivalent on par with the majesty of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. (For more dazzling holiday guitar tomfoolery, look into the album it's featured on, 1997's Merry Axemas.)

Who doesn't want a large semiaquatic mammal for the holidays? For then-10-year-old child star Gayla Peevey, not only did she score with the catchy tune, she also got her wish.

The 1953 novelty hit, written by John Rox, rocketed up the pop charts and led to a fundraising campaign to buy Peevey an actual hippo for Christmas. Children donated their dimes to the cause, and the Oklahoma City native got her hippo, named Mathilda, which she donated to the Oklahoma City Zoo.

The song itself features plodding brass instrumentals and unforgettable lyrics such as, "Mom says a hippo would eat me up but then/ Teacher says a hippo is a vegetarian." It seems Peevey still has a fond legacy with the hippo activist community — she was on hand in 2017 when the Oklahoma City Zoo acquired a pygmy hippopotamus.

In a contemplative mood this Christmas? Try getting into the holiday spirit by way of meditating on the true meaning of the season with this brash, uptempo Southern California crust punk tune.

Now the best-known song from the Vandals' 1996 Christmas album of the same name, "Oi To The World!" remained a relatively obscure track by the Huntington Beach punkers until it was covered by a rising pop/ska crossover band from nearby Anaheim, Calif., in 1997. (Perhaps you have heard of them — they were called No Doubt.) Ever since, the song has been a mainstay of the Vandals' live sets, and they have also played the album Oi To The World! in its entirety every year since its release at their annual Winter Formal show in Anaheim, now in its 29th year.

Though it's best known from OutKast's 1994 debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, the Christmas version of the track "Player's Ball" was released earlier on A LaFace Family Christmas, an L.A. Reid-led project to introduce new acts. The then-young Atlanta rapper duo took a Southern hip-hop spin on the season, which can come across as a little irreverent, but at least they're honest: "Ain't no chimneys in the ghetto so I won't be hangin' my socks on no chimneys." Though some people may not find it cheerful, OutKast's season's greetings give "a little somethin' for the players out there hustlin'."

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more heartbreaking Christmas story than this Tom Waits' masterpiece from 1978's Blue Valentine. "Charlie, I'm pregnant and living on 9th Street," begins the Christmas card narrative in which a woman writes to an old flame, reporting how much better things are going since she quit drugs and alcohol and found a trombone-playing husband.

Waits' signature early career piano-plinking and tall-tale-storytelling weaves through a dream world of hair grease and used car lots, even sneaking in a Little Anthony And The Imperials reference. In the end, our narrator comes clean with the sobering lyric, "I don't have a husband, he don't play the trombone" before pleading, "I need to borrow money to pay this lawyer and Charlie hey, I'll be eligible for parole come Valentine's Day." For the uninitiated, this is the off-beat genius of GRAMMY winner Waits at his finest.

Though they took some lumps in their '80s hair-metal heyday, few would dare deny Winger's talent and musicianship. Surely on display here, frontman Kip Winger (a GRAMMY-nominated classical musician) and his bandmates begin with a traditional unplugged reading of the Franz Xaver Gruber-penned holiday chestnut, complete with four-part harmony.

But then it gets really interesting: the boys get "funky" with an inside-out musical pivot that fuses percussive rhythmic accents, pentatonic-based acoustic riffing, Winger's gravely vocals, and some choice bluesy soloing (and high-pitched vocal responses) courtesy of lead guitarist Reb Beach.

With lyrics that include "I know I should have thought twice before I kissed her" in the opening, you know you're in for a sleigh ride like none other. It's therefore no surprise that Cyndi Lauper and Swedish rock band the Hives' unconventional Christmas duel describes many marital hiccups that might make some blush.

Yet, the raucous duet somehow comes out on a high note, concluding, "We should both just be glad/And spend this Christmas together." The 2008 track was the brainchild of the Hives, who always wanted to do a song with Lauper. "This is a Christmas song whose eggnog has been spiked with acid, and whose definition of holiday cheer comes with a complimentary kick below the belt," wrote Huffington Post in 2013. "It's also an absolute riot."

Leave it to LCD Soundsystem's producer/frontman James Murphy to pen a holiday song about the depressing side of the season. "If your world is feeling small/ There's no one on the phone/ You feel close enough to call," he sings, tapping into that seasonal weirdness that can creep up, especially as everything around you is incessant smiles, warmth and cheer, and pumpkin-spice lattes. While he doesn't shy away from examining the depressing side of surviving the holiday season as an aging 20-, 30-, 40-something, Murphy does at least give a glimmer of hope to grab onto, transient and fleeting though it may be, as he refrains, "But I'm still coming home to you."

As Snoop Dogg declares, "It's Christmas time and my rhyme's steady bumpin'." This track from the 1996 album Christmas On Death Row lets you know why "Santa Claus Goes Straight To The Ghetto." Church food, love between people, and happiness stand out as Christmas is "time to get together and give all you got; you got food, good moods and what's better than together with your people." Love in the hard hood might have to watch itself, but the various artists of Death Row contagiously testify to abundant love and seasonal joy.

Bypassing the urge to write new material on their rocking Christmas album, 2006's A Twisted Christmas, Twister Sister instead took the most recognizable holiday classics in the book and made them faster, louder and more aggressive. The result — which, to date, equate to the group's seventh and final album — is a supercharged concept collection of songs such as "Silver Bells," "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and "Deck The Halls" bludgeoned by chainsaw guitar riffs, thundering drums and lead singer Dee Snider's soaring screams. This unusual combination makes A Twisted Christmas the perfect soundtrack for any child of the '80s still hoping to tick off the neighbors this holiday season.

In anticipation of the 2025 NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco, P-Lo breathes new life into T.W.D.Y.'s classic "Players Holiday." Featuring Saweetie, Larry June, Kamaiyah, LaRussell, G-Eazy, thuy, and YMTK, the track celebrates Bay Area culture with its infectious energy and hometown pride. With its dynamic lineup and energetic vibe, "Players Holiday '25" is a love letter to the region's sound and legacy that bridges hip-hop and basketball culture.

This article features contributions from Nate Hertweck, Tim McPhate, Renée Fabian, Brian Haack, Philip Merrill, Nina Frazer and Taylor Weatherby.

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Who Discovered Kendrick Lamar? 9 Questions About The 'GNX' Rapper Answered

Did you know Kendrick Lamar was discovered at just 16 years old? And why did he leave TDE? GRAMMY.com dives deep into some of the most popular questions surrounding the multi-GRAMMY winner.

|GRAMMYs/Nov 25, 2024 - 11:18 pm

Editor's note: This article was updated to include the latest information about Kendrick Lamar's 2024 album release 'GNX,' and up-to-date GRAMMY wins and nominations with additional reporting by Nina Frazier.

When the world crowns you the king of a genre as competitive as rap, your presence — and lack thereof — is palpable. After a five-year hiatus, Kendrick Lamar declaratively stomped back on stage with his fifth studio album, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, to explain why the crown no longer fits him.

Two years later, Lamar circles back to celebrate the west on 2024's GNX, a 12-track release that revels in the root of his love for hip-hop and California culture, from the lowriders to the rappers that laid claim to the golden state.

“My baby boo, you either heal n—s or you kill n—s/ Both is true, it take some tough skin just to deal with you” Lamar raps on "gloria" featuring SZA, a track that opines on his relationship with the genre.

The Compton-born rapper (who was born Kendrick Lamar Duckworth) wasn't always championed as King Kendrick. In hip-hop, artists have to earn that moniker, and Lamar's enthroning occurred in 2013 when he delivered a now-infamous verse on Big Sean's "Control."

"I'm Makaveli's offspring, I'm the King of New York, King of the Coast; one hand I juggle 'em both," Lamar raps before name-dropping some of the top rappers of the time, from Drake to J.Cole.

Whether you've been a fan of Lamar since before his crown-snatching verse or you find yourself in need of a crash course on the 37-year-old rapper's illustrious career, GRAMMY.com answers nine questions that will paint the picture of Lamar's more than decade-long reign.

Who Discovered Kendrick Lamar?

Due to the breakthrough success of his Aftermath Entertainment debut (good kid, m.A.A.d city), most people attribute Kendrick Lamar's discovery to fellow Compton legend Dr. Dre. But seven years before Dre's label came calling, Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith saw potential in a 16-year-old rapper by the name of K.Dot.

Lamar's first mixtape in 2004 was enough for Tiffith's Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) to offer the aspiring rapper a deal with the label in 2005. However, Lamar would later learn that Tiffith's impact on his life dates back to multiple encounters between his father and the TDE founder, which Lamar raps about in his 2017 track "DUCKWORTH."

How Many Albums Has Kendrick Lamar Released?

Kendrick Lamar has released six studio albums: Section.80 (2011), Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City (2012), To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) DAMN. (2017),Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022), and GNX (2024). Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, To Pimp a Butterfly and DAMN. received both Rap Album Of The Year and Album Of The Year GRAMMY nominations.

What Is Kendrick Lamar's Most Popular Song?

Across the board, it's "HUMBLE." The 2017 track is Lamar's only solo No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (he also reached No. 1 status with Taylor Swift on their remix of her 1989 hit "Bad Blood"), and as of press time, "HUMBLE." is also his most-streamed song on Spotify and YouTube.

How Many GRAMMYs Has Kendrick Lamar Won?

As of November 2024, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 57 GRAMMY nominations overall, solidifying his place as one of the most nominated artists in GRAMMY history and the second-most nominated rapper of all time, behind Jay-Z. Five of Lamar's 17 GRAMMY wins are tied to DAMN., which also earned Lamar the status of becoming the first rapper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize.

His most recent wins include three awards at the 2023 GRAMMYs, which included two for his album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, and Best Rap Performance for "The Hillbillies" with Baby Keem.

Does Kendrick Lamar Have Any Famous Relatives?

He has two: Rapper Baby Keem and former Los Angeles Lakers star Nick Young are both cousins of his.

Lamar appeared on three tracks — "family ties," "range brothers" and "vent" — from Keem's debut album, The Melodic Blue. Keem then returned the favor for Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, featuring on "Savior (Interlude)" and "Savior" as well as receiving production and writing credits on "N95" and "Die Hard."

Why Did Kendrick Lamar Wear A Crown Of Thorns?

Lamar can be seen sporting a crown of thorns on the Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers album cover. He has sported the look for multiple performances since the project's release.

Dave Free described the striking headgear as, "a godly representation of hood philosophies told from a digestible youthful lens."

Holy symbolism and the blurred line between kings and gods are themes Lamar revisits often on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. He uses lines like "Kendrick made you think about it, but he is not your savior" and songs like "Mirror" to reject the unforeseen, God-like expectations that came with his King of Hip-Hop status.

According to Vogue, the Tiffany & Co. designed crown features 8,000 cobblestone micro pave diamonds and took over 1,300 hours of work by four craftsmen to construct.

Why Did Kendrick Lamar Leave TDE?

After five albums, four mixtapes, one compilation project, an EP, and a GRAMMY-nominated Black Panther: The Album, Kendrick Lamar and Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) confirmed that Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers was the Compton rapper's last project under the iconic West Coast label.

According to Lamar, his departure was about growth as opposed to any internal troubles. "May the Most High continue to use Top Dawg as a vessel for candid creators. As I continue to pursue my life's calling," Lamar wrote on his website in August 2021. "There's beauty in completion."

TDE president Punch expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with Mic. "We watched him grow from a teenager up into an established grown man, a businessman, and one of the greatest artists of all time," he said. "So it's time to move on and try new things and venture out."

Before Lamar's official exit from TDE, he launched a new venture called pgLang — a multi-disciplinary service company for creators, co-founded with longtime collaborator Dave Free — in 2020. The young company has already collaborated with Cash App, Converse and Louis Vuitton.

Has Kendrick Lamar Ever Performed at The Super Bowl?

Yes, Kendrick Lamar performed in the halftime show for Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles in 2022, alongside fellow rap legends Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Eminem, as well as R&B icon Mary J. Blige. Anderson .Paak and 50 Cent also made special appearances during the star-studded performance. As if performing at the Super Bowl in your home city wasn't enough, the Compton rapper also got to watch his home team, the Los Angeles Rams, hoist the Lombardi trophy at the end of the night.

Three years after his first Super Bowl halftime performance, Lamar will return to headline the Super Bowl LIX halftime show on Feb. 9, 2025 — just one week after the 2025 GRAMMYs — at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

Is Kendrick Lamar On Tour?

Yes. Kendrick Lamar is currently scheduled to hit the road with SZA on the Grand National Tour beginning in May 2025. Lamar concluded The Big Steppers Tour in 2022, where he was joined by pgLang artists Baby Keem and Tanna Leone. The tour included a four-show homecoming at L.A.'s Crypto.com Arena in September 2022, followed by performances in Europe,Australia, and New Zealand through late 2022.

Currently, there are no upcoming tour dates scheduled, but fans should check back for updates following the release of GNX.

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GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016

Upon winning the GRAMMY for Best Rap Album for 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' Kendrick Lamar thanked those that helped him get to the stage, and the artists that blazed the trail for him.

|GRAMMYs/Oct 13, 2023 - 06:01 pm

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system.

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood."

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes.

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