Toby Gad is the songwriter and producer behind some of this century's most beloved hits. Able to merge seamlessly with artists to create defining, breakout songs, he’s become a go-to songwriter for the big labels looking for ammo for their biggest stars.
Now, for his album Piano Diaries, Gad is starting a new project and embarking on a new era, working with upcoming artists, free from label control while providing a sound and a style that’s unmistakably all his own.
The album features new reworkings of some of his biggest songs, from If I Were A Boy (Beyonce), All of Me (John Legend) to Big Girls Don’t Cry (Fergie) it’s wall-to-wall smash hits voiced by a line-up of new up and coming stars alongside Gad’s own distinctive piano playing and production.
We caught up with the hitmaker to discover more about the project and why, after decades of big label success, he’s putting himself and new artists in control.
Tell us about Piano Diaries. What’s brought us to this album?
“Well, in a nutshell, you could say that, for my entire career, I've always worked for major labels. Working with the artists they had just signed, writing songs, sometimes 100 songs a year, two to three sessions every day. And I paused all that at the end of last year. I decided I really would like to establish my name and come to major labels and release a song I have written with their artist and release it independently. I spent half a year thinking, how can I do this? How can I establish my songwriter name as someone who major labels would trust to independently release songs with?
“And after a lot of thinking, I set out to start with my ‘greatest hits’, re-recording them with new artists, but also passing the torch to new singers with these older songs I wrote 20 years ago. They’re still on the radio and I felt it would be good if young, new artists could sing these songs.
“So we recorded with Big Girls Don’t Cry with Victoria Justice and Kelly Clarkson got us on her show, and then we went on to record Skyscraper, the Demi Lovato song, with Camylio, who’s signed to Universal Republic and that was the first time that we self-released a song with an artist on a major label.
“And so we are kind of establishing my name slowly now as someone that major labels can trust with self-releasing songs that I've written, which is a brand new development.
“That's the mission we are on and we also started releasing other artist songs like with Victoria Justice. We have released her second single now and we make music videos - we act like a label, basically. I'm very happy about where we are. We have about seven million streams with our label, which is independent. It's not the billions of streams we have with my hits, but it feels like an accomplishment because we're doing everything from scratch. I'm super excited about it.”
And you’ve been performing live, too.
“I've started performing a lot - I’ve done 15 shows already. I played in the Palladium - a sold out show. I got 25 minutes on stage, presenting four of my songs and telling the stories of All of Me or If I Were A Boy, Who You Are - talking about how these songs were written and the audience really like to hear these stories.
“And then I perform a song with young artists. I never thought I'd be on stage again! I'm 56 years old and suddenly now I'm on stage again.”
How did you first get into music?
“My parents had a jazz band. My dad played the clarinet and my mother played the piano. They did gigs when I was still in my mom's womb so I think I came out knowing the entire repertoire that the Dixieland jazz band played.
“They never wrote a new song. It was always the same 50 songs. So I think I could predict every note of their solos already because they were so locked into what they were doing.
“And I became a fan of Keith Jarrett - that was a record that my mom listened to very often: the Cologne concert and Breman concert. Keith Jarrett's piano improvisation is fascinating to me.
“And when my parents rehearsed in our living room, after they were done, my brother and I would take over the instruments and start doing our own songs. And I guess I must have been five or six years old when we started doing concerts in the intermissions. And that's how we made our first pocket money.
“After my parents went back on stage, we went through the audience and asked, ‘do you wanna donate to us?’ That’s how I made my first 100 marks. I bought a whole Smurf village.”
What was your big break?
“My first big break was Milli Vanilli. I must have been 18 or 19 years old and my brother and I, we landed three songs on the first Milli Vanilli album which went straight to number one in Europe. And we had the B side of Girl, I'm Gonna Miss You. It was a global number one.
“That showed us early on that with just three songs you can make so much money and hear your songs all around the world on the radio. I think that was the pivotal feeling. I thought ‘I want to do that more! I want to write songs that come full circle and I can hear them on the radio.’”
When Milli Vanilli was supposed to be in the studio recording, Frank Farian said, ‘You can't be there. They don't want people around.’
So the Milli Vanilli scandal must have been a surprise? Were you caught up in that?
“Well, Milli Vanilli was maybe the first time there was an act that did ‘zero’. They only danced and they listened. There’s not a word of them on the record. When Milli Vanilli was supposed to be in the studio recording, Frank Farian said, ‘You can't be there. They don't want people around.’ Which isn’t unusual - when an artist sings, they don't want people around. So for the longest time, none of us knew that they weren't singing.
“Of course, the music was celebrated and so we were happy to be part of that music, but it was shocking that they actually had nothing to do with it. And by the time they won the Grammy [Best New Artist, 1990] Milli Vanilli and Frank Farian hated each other.
“I was on ‘camp Frank Farian’. We worked seven years with him and he was an early mentor. I loved his work ethic. He was always in the studio working very hard on many different projects. Funnily enough when I started working with Frank, he was around 50 years old and had started to re-record his greatest hits. Now I'm here doing the same!
“Five or six years ago, he surprised me and came by the studio in Los Angeles and it was wonderful to show him what had come of my work.”
You work as both a writer and a producer. Which do you prefer?
“I’m more of a writer. I would say I produce maybe 40% of the songs that I write. But with the Piano Diaries project, I produced it all. It was an interesting evolution. As you know, my piano is my main instrument.”
What’s your favourite gear in your studio?
“I love the piano. I also write a lot on guitar, but the guitar is more of a mystery to me. But on the piano, I’ve really dug into it over the years and have assembled quite a few pianos. I have a Bösendorfer from the ‘70s that I love very much with the extended keys at the bottom.
“And I have a Steinway from 1894 that is very original. It’s a concert grand, it commands a whole room. So it takes up a lot of space, but the Bösendorfer has something very special about it.
“I’ve played on so many pianos recently. Like some of the Piano Diaries recordings we did at Metropolis in London, and Studio A has a beautiful Fazioli on which Freddie Mercury recorded Innuendo.
“And while the tone of these pianos is good, they all could use some TLC because quite often these pianos you touch the keys lightly and there's no tone at all. And so on Piano Diaries, I spent a lot of time figuring out how I can make an accompaniment that is minimalist and sparse, that is soft and mellow and lets the vocal breathe and the lyric unfold so it can carry the song and you don't miss any other instruments.
“And on some of these songs, like Untouched, I probably over the course of three weeks must have recorded it 200 times until I found the sound that is exactly how I hear them. It was a long, long process to get to that simplicity.”
And your piano is in your studio in LA? Was that where Piano Diaries was recorded?
“Yes, almost all of it.”
And prior to that you had a studio in New York?
“Yes, I was in New York City for nine years. I had a room in the jewellery district on the 12th floor of a building and I shared it with a jewellery designer who made rings and things from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. And I came in at four in the afternoon and would work until seven in the morning.
“Like the night was mine in midtown Manhattan [laughs]. It felt so inspiring. I could open these massive industrial windows and I had a view of the Empire State Building and I made the speakers as loud as I wanted. Times Square was resonating with my music, but nobody lives there, it’s all just business. It was so inspiring for many years. I was a complete night owl.”
What projects did you work on in that New York era?
“Well, Big Girls Don’t Song Cry was written around this time, and If I Was A Boy and Skyscraper. A lot of those hits were written around that time. All of Me came later. I wrote that with John Legend in my Los Angeles studio.”
How did you land the gig working with Fergie? How does something like that come about?
“Fergie was at a real low point when we started. At the time she had just left the Wild Orchid girl group and just got out of rehab and had to find herself. And I was lucky to be at the right place at the right time and she came into the session in tears and I was wondering what's wrong and she said she just left her long distance boyfriend and I asked her, ‘do you still love him?’
“And she says, ‘Yeah, I love him very much’ and I suggested maybe writing him a goodbye letter. So she did and when I read the letter, it said ‘the smell of your skin still lingers on me’, ‘you're probably on your flight back to your hometown’, ‘fairytales don't always have a happy ending’… For Big Girls Don’t Cry I got chills. I thought ‘This is a verse. This is incredible. Even though nothing rhymes, it feels like this is very personal and meaningful.’
“So we made that the first verse and then for the chorus, I had some melody ideas and the words were pouring out of her. We wrote the song very quickly.
“But then it took years and years for it to come out because then she joined the Black Eyed Peas and did three albums with the Black Eyed Peas. So finally, when it was time for her album, the song was forgotten and it almost didn't make the record. And then it wasn’t her first, second or third single.
“It was the fourth single and became her biggest song. And that was the song that put me on the map.
“After that… Wow. Now America knows me by a song, and that changed everything.”
The right song, the right love story, the Grammys, the audience, the world was watching… That was the moment that made it a hit.
And John Legend’s All of Me. Didn’t that take a similar amount of time to be released?
“That took three years. But it was a clearer path. I had written with John Legend a few times before then and John was always very ‘neo soul’ and very much ‘too cool for pop’. And I think that led to us working more together.
“I think he perceived me as the pop guy and I perceived him as the Philadelphia neo soul type guy. And one day he came into my studio and said, ‘Toby, I'm so in love. I need to write a love song today’ and he already had the beginning: ‘All of me loves all of you’. And then he didn't know how to continue.
“So I got on the piano and I thought of my wife and I thought ‘love your curves and all your edges, all your perfect imperfections.’ So we were trading places on the piano and putting the lines together and that song didn't take long to write. Maybe an hour and a half.
“But then it took a while before I heard that John was actually serious about the song and that it was coming out. It wasn't the first single, it was the second single of his album. And then it got stuck in the soul and R&B chart but eventually he got to perform on the Grammys and they had this magical shot where he was in the middle of the room on the piano and the camera captured him and Chrissy [Teigen, his wife] and they were locking eyes and it was magical how he sang to her.
“And I think that singular moment, where everything aligned: The right song, the right love story, the Grammys, the audience, the world was watching… That was the moment that made it a hit. It was the second slowest climb in the history of Billboard. It took six months to get to number one.
And one of my favourite songs is Untouched by The Veronicas. Did you write that with the twins?
“So that was the second album we did. For the second album, I still lived in New York and they were in Los Angeles. I came to Los Angeles working on my laptop, which at the time back then was quite revolutionary. Back in the day, people would still book these massive studios to make music.
“I had a room in Venice in the Cadillac Hotel - a tiny room that used to be Charlie Chaplin's place. I could be loud in that room and I had an ocean view so that was always the room I booked when I came to LA and my wife was visiting with me at the time.
“And I asked her to leave the room for a moment because I had an idea in my head and I wanted to sing it and be alone with it. And so I had the chorus for Untouched…
“I had already prepared a few track ideas before because The Veronicas had asked me to do some music that was a little harder, faster - they gave me some pointers of where they wanted the second album to go. So I’d already spent maybe a week or two preparing guitar riffs and drum riffs and I already had this string theme for cellos for Untouched. But when my wife left the room, I came up with the chorus, ‘I feel so untouched’.
“And then in the afternoon, we went to the girls and I showed them that chorus idea and they loved it. And then we worked out the verses together and started singing it. It was a very euphoric session. We were all super excited about it and it didn't take long for it to come out. We did 11 songs in two weeks.”
I looked it up - it’s 178 bpm. That’s a crazy number.
“Part of me likes punk rock, right? I like this rebellious energy. I should write more songs at that tempo! It's one of the few that I did, but I've always been a fan of that genre and I love how punk is so liberating and it's raw and it's just pure emotion. Part of me would love to be in a punk band [laughs].”
And that first verse: ‘I go ooh-ooh, you go ah-ah, la la la la…’ You must have written that down and thought ‘We’ve gotta change this’…
“That's one of the bits that I came up with in the hotel and I thought ‘the girls are gonna kill me when I sing this to them!’
“But they make sense of it because there are two of them and they sing to each other and they can interact that way. It became fun and they somehow connected the whole lyric idea to something that was personal to them. It’s like a love story and they made it sexy. This song could have only happened with them.”
When collaborating with artists, do you need an artist to bounce off? Or have you ever written a song completely solo?
“Most songs happen in real time with the artists and I actually don't prepare that much anymore. I just go into sessions and we have a conversation and when you walk away from a conversation, there's always something that lingers in your mind. That's the bit that could be a good hook line for the chorus or a good title.
“So I always wanna find these conversation bits that linger with you, that are intriguing, and I never wanna start writing a song until I have found this bit. Basically, what you walk away from after hearing a song for the first time is what I want to have before I even start writing a song.”
So it's not like you go into every session with 100 ideas and flick through them?
“I mean, I have accumulated 100 or more [laughs] but usually what makes the cut is the idea of the moment. Of what feels most urgent on that day.”
And do you always just work with the artist? Have you done those ‘big writing room’ sessions with lots of writers together?
“My first big hit was with Fergie was a 50/50 co-write. And that was just me and the artist.
And after this became so big, I felt that I needed to be the ‘everything man’. It should only ever be 50/50. I was very much against having a third writer in the room. And that was maybe a handicap because someone like Doctor Luke or Max Martin, they’re all known for very collaborative sessions where there's five, six, seven writers in the room and somehow the song happens.
“And I think that’s what’s set me apart, but maybe what’s also set me back because at that time, I think I could have been so much more productive if I would have had producers in the room or more lyricists in the room.”
I had to tell Madonna ‘This is not good. Let's rewrite this again and do this better’.
And that was the case when you worked with Madonna. That must have been a big deal.
“That was a big deal. With Madonna, it was a lot of people in the room and that's just how she operates. Getting into the room with Madonna was very, very difficult.
“Neil Jacobson from Interscope called and said, ‘do you want to be in a writing camp with Madonna?’ And I said ‘No, I never go to writing camps because the artist never shows up’ and he convinced me, ‘No, you have to come.’
“So I spent a week in a windowless studio at Interscope in Santa Monica and - of course - Madonna didn't show up… I spent a whole week just churning out ideas that went nowhere because they were so tailor made for this one thing.
“And then a week later, he calls me again. ‘There's another writing camp with Madonna in New York. Do you wanna come?’ And I said, ‘absolutely not’ [laughs].
“But everyone around me… My management and so on… They convinced me. So I ended up going and on the very first day Madonna shows up and I was, of course, very intimidated by her. Like everyone is at first.
“But after a few days or so it came down to some really hard work. You have to leave with a good song so it’s not about being kind or nice or anything. And that's when we bonded - when we were in it for making music together that that would go somewhere.
“Madonna is a hard worker but I'm a very hard worker. She called me ‘the slave driver.’”
There were a lot of writers and producers and egos on that Rebel Heart album… Kanye West… Diplo…
“Later on, she was in the studio with Diplo as he was just getting popular at the time. He had very little time for Madonna and Madonna was getting very angry with him because he wasn't finishing anything. So she called me in to finish the songs she had started with Diplo.
“And that was maybe one of the hardest tasks ever because they had all these half finished, half written songs and there were bits that were not right. And I had to tell Madonna ‘This is not good. Let's rewrite this again and do this better’. But who am I to tell such a legend with five decades of number ones that ‘This is not good enough’? But I just had to trust my feelings and fight for the songs. And I survived.”
Speaking of big stars. Beyonce. How did you get the gig with Beyonce for If I Were I Boy? Was that something that was on the back burner for a while too?
“Well, I had found this girl, BC Jean, on MySpace and we wrote 10 songs together. We took a pizza break and we're walking down 46th street in New York. And, she was angry about a boy who was mean to her. And she said, ‘If I were a boy, I'd be a much better man.’ And I thought, well, let's forget about the pizza… What else would you do if you were a boy?
“And so I got the guitar out back at the studio and we wrote this song also quickly and it just felt urgent. I was thinking about the Joan Osborne song, One of Us, which I love. So I got inspired by this circular guitar pattern and that inspired I Were A Boy musically. That's a similar guitar pattern I picked out.
“And when we started with the verse - I love that melody so much that we just use the same melody for the chorus just an octave up.
“And then when the song was finished for some reason, it didn't quite work out with BC Jean to release it and at that time Big Girls Don’t Cry was all over the radio so I thought that maybe I could reach out to Beyonce now - maybe it's in the stars now since Beyonce must know my song.
“And after many months of knocking on the doors of her label management and publishers, I finally got the call that she wanted to work with me.
“And I got booked into Jay-Z's studio. And the first two days she didn't show up. But on the third day, she finally showed up, played me a few songs she had on the record. And the next day she came in and wanted to write and I played her If I Were A Boy and she wanted to record it on the spot.
“So an hour and a half later I had recorded and produced Beyonce on my song. She was incredible. What a professional with so much control of her voice and such a boss. I was in awe of her and then we sat at the couch for half an hour talking about family, about life. I showed her how to play the song on the guitar. And that was the last time I ever saw Beyonce.”
I showed her how to play the song on the guitar. And that was the last time I ever saw Beyonce.
That’s a shame. Sounds like it could have been the start of something even bigger.
“I know. At least Madonna kept calling me back and I went to two of her birthday parties and she asked me to go on tour with her, which I thought about and then eventually declined because I'm bad at repetition. I love improvisation. I like to change things up every time. So I couldn’t be a good music director or piano player. It would be different every time.
“The show is going to last this long, these songs in this order… You’ve got to do all that stuff.”
Is there a big rivalry between big name writers like yourself? I was listening to Jaci Velásquez, Unspoken, from years ago. That’s a very Max Martin kind of sound.
“[laughs] Max Martin… For some reason. I’ve never felt any rivalry because he's so beyond everyone. He started so early. He's younger than me and he's already left such a legacy.
“I have the most respect for Max and I've met him many times on award shows. He's a wonderful human being. But I must say, with Dr Luke, it definitely felt competitive because that was the time when I was starting to get successful and he was on a very fast trajectory.
“Y’see I grew up with an older brother who was always better at everything and more attractive, and had all the girls and I felt I was never good enough for maybe the first 10 years of my life.
“So that was ingrained in me that if there is someone who is better you wanna compete with them. And then it eats you up first thing in the morning. You start thinking about it. ‘Oh, why does he have a number one now!’
“I mean, I’ve met Luke many times and he’s also been very kind to me. But subconsciously I kept looking for these rivals that I want to compete with. And I think that comes from growing up with an older brother who I could never compete with.”
Have you met Ryan Tedder?
“Yes, I've met him several times. We’ve said several times that we're gonna work together, but it hasn't happened. I have a lot of respect for the guy. He's great.”
Is there anybody out there that you’d love to work with but you haven't worked with?
“It's so funny, you know, it used to always be the big stars on the big major labels. But now it’s really the indie artist that excites me. I've developed a whole new respect for successful independent artists who don't need record labels. And since the end of last year I've become an indie artist, performing, which I never thought I would. I have a lot of respect for ‘do it yourself’.
“You can do it yourself now, which means there's a lot more diversity which is good. I feel diversity is great. My 15-year-old daughter doesn't know or care what Taylor Swift does. She only cares about what her friends just discovered - what’s new from these little new independent artists who do their own thing.
“And I think as of last year now, I have so much love for that. I think it's incredible. And those are the people I want to work with.”
What advice would you give to any writer or producer or musician that's wanting to emulate your success in 2024? What are their first steps?
“These are very different times from back when I started. You had to be in the favour of the record labels. The record labels were between you and your fans. They would curate what a fan could hear from you and they would bring the money to make the record, then promote the record - to let the world know that there's a piece of plastic in a record store that you cannot open, you can't listen to it, but you have to buy it!
“It's $20 and… Look at the cover picture. It's beautiful! [laughs]
“Nowadays, it couldn't be any easier. You go DistroKid it or AWAL and put up your own record and promote it on your own Instagram and TikTok… Boom. It's out there. You're planting seeds and if it resonates you could actually get somewhere.
“So my advice is to just be super active, embrace your fans on social media and respond to them if they like something, do more of that! And do your thing. Find out what makes you unique, find out what makes you special.
“Nowadays, everyone has a music studio in their laptop. All these opportunities are there. Now the only limitation is your own creativity and you can do something that moves the world and makes people want to listen to you. You just need to find what makes you unique and why people should listen to you.”
