Breaking: Carolina Liar

Who: Los Angeles-via-Stockholm sextet Carolina Liar, who, with the help of mega-producer Max Martin, are soundtracking every premature break-up this summer with their hit "I'm Not Over."

Sounds Like: Combining the Killers' new New Wave, U2's knack for anthems and the bubblegum pop productions of Martin, Carolina Liar come off as the perfect house band for The Hills. Perhaps that's why singer Chad Wolf and the rest of the group had four songs from their debut album Coming to Terms featured on the MTV show. The band will spread their infectious pop across the country as they tour with The Academy Is... this fall.

Vital Stats

• Wolf had an early start in music, taking part with his piano-playing grandmother at a church in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. From there, Wolf moved to Los Angeles, where he interned for Songwriter Hall of Famer Diane Warren, danced in a Celine Dion video and played countless coffee shops. It was by chance he met famed Swedish pop producer Max Martin.

• "I was house-sitting for one of Max Martin's best friends." After befriending the boy band extraordinaire, Wolf was persuaded by friends to spend the summer in Sweden. Originally the plan was just to watch some World Cup games, but "On the flight over, I wrote the lyrics to Coming to Terms in a plane seat." A demo tape came out of that trip, and a year later, Wolf found himself back in Stockholm, recording an album.

• "Whatever I could get my hands on, I would listen to," Wolf says of the music that shaped him, starting with the first album he ever bought, Duran Duran's A View to a Kill. "I went through this crazy Cure and Smiths phase, then a heavy jazz phase, and then blues," Wolf says. "Tons of country stuff too."

Hear It Now: Coming To Terms is in stores now. Click above for Carolina Liar's exclusive performance of "Last Night."

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  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
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  MOVIES 'Great Gatsby' Is a Crushing Disappointment
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  TV Why You Should Watch 'Happy Endings'
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  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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