Mark Ronson Aligns Label With Interscope; Amy Winehouse Album Delayed

Fresh off the success of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black and his own solo album, producer Mark Ronson has signed a contract that will see his own label Allido Records be distributed exclusively through Interscope Records. The first product of this new deal: Washington D.C. rapper Wale, who will finally release his proper debut album after a string of mixtapes and street singles later this year. Speaking about the deal with Allido, Interscope CEO Jimmy Iovine said "Mark has that rare ear for great songs and artists who will have extraordinary careers." As for Ronson protege Winehouse, the singer was supposed to begin work on the follow-up to Back to Black in the Bahamas with producer Salaam Remi but reportedly cancelled the recording sessions, pushing the new album's release date tentatively to early 2009.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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