Every week, a different FADER editor compiles a playlist to highlight a new release and give you a guide to that artist’s web of influences and peers. These Staff Selects live in our Spotify app, alongside GEN Fs from our archives and playlists for each issue. This week, it’s Amber Bravo on songwriters/producers Justin Parker and Dev Hynes.
Justin Parker would've been a footballer if a knee injury hadn't retired him from the playing field prematurely. Luckily, the British songwriter and producer has scored in another arena, picking up a Ivor Novello award this year for his work with Lana Del Rey on her song "Video Games" (he also wrote a number of other tracks on Born To Die). As he told The Independent, "I'm just in it to make a living as a songwriter. A year ago I was doing very little, just writing songs without a purpose." His publishers Sony/ATV linked him up with other young female artists like Bat For Lashes and Ellie Goulding, who both currently have new releases. (Parker cowrote "Laura" the lead single and best track on Bat For Lashes' The Haunted Man.) Dev Hynes cuts a more public persona than Parker due to his solo work as Blood Orange, but like Parker, he's lent his stellar production and songwriting skills to some high-profile female artists like Sky Ferreira—for whom he co-produced "Everything Is Embarrassing," the best track on her new album—Florence Welch and Solange Knowles. Here's a one-to-one look at Parker and Hynes' uncanny knack for penning pop songs for female recording artists that sit soundly on both the indie and popular sides of the pop divide. (Sadly, Hyne's remix remix of Del Rey's "Blue Jeans" didn't make it onto the official remix EP and therefore not to Spotify, so I gave him an extra shout out in the form of Coastal Groove’s standout, "Champagne Coast.")
Stream: Staff Selects Playlist: Justin Parker and Dev Hynes Make Pop Gold
