As producers go, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more versatile or accomplished one than Greg Wells. Perhaps that's due to Wells' immersive production style, where instead of stamping each project with the same seal, he works side-by-side with the artist to build something magical together. Case and point: Wells' credits list shines with diverse names such a Keith Urban, Adele, Twenty One Pilots, Dua Lipa, Celine Dion, Deftones, and Pink, to name only a few.
But his latest production triumph might also be his most ambitious. A seasoned record-maker, Wells stepped into a new realm as producer/mixer for The Greatest Showman film soundtrack. He demonstrated his ability to collaborate not just musically, but to incorporate visual storytelling elements as well. The blockbuster soundtrack yielded hits "This Is Me" and "Rewrite The Stars," and brought Wells' chameleon sound to a whole new audience worldwide.
We sat down with the man behind the songs of The Greatest Showman to talk about how the film's director, Michael Gracey, was the catalyst for Wells' involvement with the film's ambitious — and now wildly successful — soundtrack, how he handled the many talented vocalists on the project such as Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron, his work with Grace VanderWaal, and more.
You have plenty of experience working in the studio with artists like Keith Urban, Katy Perry and Twenty One Pilots, and The Greatest Showman is the first film project you've taken on. What made this the right project to jump into music for the silver screen?
The director. He's a fantastic guy. ... I know I was his idea. And he tried to bring me in earlier on the film and we still don't know exactly who said it, but he was told that I wasn't interested, which is the total opposite reaction to his meeting. I was like, "Let's start." And, thankfully, he reached out a few times, and finally got through to my management who said, "Greg's been ready to go since 10 months ago when you met."
Michael has a brilliant eye, and the choreography in the film is incredible. The songs are incredible. … I would work to picture. There was only one song I didn't have a picture on, and I kept putting it up and my engineer sometimes would take it down 'cause he wanted to see Pro Tools. And I said, "You gotta keep it up cause the music sounds different to me and it makes me make different choices when I see the visual."
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The director, Michael, came in and he listed to a few things and he was really supportive and really great and he said, "Greg, you're making the visuals look different." And, I didn't know what he meant. He said, "It feels different now. They actually look different to me." And, he's the guy that shot it.
You just kind of hit upon one of my other questions, which was whether or not you had to take a different approach working on this project versus, say, an album project by Adele.
It was bizarrely the same. It's just story telling really.
"This Is Me" is having an amazing run: nominated for an Oscar, won a Golden Globe for Best Original song. That song was co-written by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul. How did you collaborate with them?
I got top billing as producer on the soundtrack, but they were by my side every day. … We spent months together in my studio here in L.A. … I'm sensitive to including the songwriters in the same way I would imagine if I was a movie director I would want the screenwriter to be there, and I want their input, 'cause that's the wellspring from which the whole thing comes.
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Justin, in particular, was literally like almost on my shoulder for weeks and months. I wanted them to love it. I wanted the director, Michael, to love it. And I wanted me to love it. That's what I was trying to get done. I didn't want to second-guess anything. I'm like that when I'm producing a record too. If I second-guess things, it usually makes it worse. I just have to make sure the artist is feeling it and I have to have that buzzy 'yes' feeling. Then I know we've done our job.
The songs on this project feature vocals by the likes of Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, and more. Given the stature of artists you've worked with, what was the biggest surprise when listening back to some of the vocals by these people who are more known for reciting lines rather than singing?
Well, all of them can sing really well. But it was definitely coming from a more theatrical place. Not so much Zac or Zendaya. They sound more like studio pop singers to me. But certainly Hugh. Hugh's very musical. … I know that he could be placed on a stage, with no microphones and 1,000 people in a theater and sing and fill the room. Sometimes that's hard to capture on a little microphone and condense that into the tiny frame of what is, for lack of a better term, pop music.
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But taking Hugh's voice, which is very big, … I wanted to give it more energy and a lot of the songs in the soundtrack, [make it] feel like your collar's being grabbed and you're being held against the wall. It's weird how unnatural I have to be [when recording and mixing] to make things just feel natural and right. And then sometimes Hugh required nothing and it just was right for the song. Getting the sound of the voice right makes everything sound better. It's the most important instrument in the entire track, far more important than the drums, far more important than anything else. It is an instrument. It is the lead instrument.
Here's what I try to shoot for. You know when you're watching a great movie if it's great within 10 minutes. We forget we're watching a movie and you're just experiencing the story of it and the experience of it. I'm trying, in my own naïve way, to have that happen musically.
"I love jazz. I play drums. I play guitar and bass. I studied pipe organ. I studied four-mallet marimba. I'm nuts. And to me it's either the music's good or it's not good. Like Duke Ellington once said, 'There's good music and there's the other stuff.'" — Greg Wells
Currently, I noticed that I think you're working on some projects with Grace VanderWaal and Pink. Any details you can share about those particular projects.
Yeah. They're both fantastic and I learn a lot from working with them both. Grace, I produced her very first EP right after she came off the show. It was just the two of us in the studio. Grace, it turns out, is a real record maker. I wasn't sure what I was walking into. The first thing I said to her was, "I just want you to realize, you're not on the TV show anymore. There's not 50 people coming up to you saying you're wearing the wrong sweater, or whatever."
After we got through the first half-day, she had some really great ideas. And then she got more confident, more confident, and would say really big things like, "I think the drums should be taken out for that verse." And she was 12 at the time. I thought, really? And then, we took them out and it sounded better. I'm not being patronizing. It really did sound better. … It took me years to get to a point where I had that kind of objectivity. … But, it was definitely a case of her producing me, me producing her, which I love.
