About the Artist Last time around, Colbie Caillat was feeling "Bubbly," and the entire pop world seemed to want a sip. But this time, effervescence flirts with explosiveness. For her sophomore album, Breakthrough, Colbie has shaken up her sound, bringing in a wider array of producers and players, and significantly picking up the tempo at times from her debut effort's signature ballads. So keep an eye on those carbonation levels: champagne corks may fly. You'd be hard-pressed to consider an album as accomplished and successful as Coco an accident, yet that's almost what Caillat's 2007 freshman release was. The sudden mania it created at radio and retail "was a surprise for me," Caillat says, "because I hadn't really been in this business yet. I hadn't been doing shows. I wasn't trying to get signed. I just was this girl who wrote songs and put them up on MySpace." By the time Coco was released to stores, "Bubbly" was already enough of an airplay sensation that the album debuted at No. 5. The massive success of a second single, "Realize," helped push the album to over 2 million shipments, in addition to almost 6 million individual digital tracks that were sold. "It all just happened naturally," says Caillat--"and now I have to keep up with it." The making of Breakthrough was far more purposeful than the ramshackle sessions that became Caillat's first album. Whatever might have been lost in the way of charming naiveté is more than made up for with greater experience and heightened maturity. "When I found out I had six months to make this album it was so exciting, because my favorite part is being in the studio and having a chance to get it right. " "We tried different versions of a lot of the songs--some raw and acoustic; some with lots of harmonies and others with 20 more instruments than needed to be there--just to see which version sounded best. We ended up having a lot of variety." But for all this diversification, there's at least one carry-over and constant: the front-and-center intimacy of Caillat's vocals, which fans already relate to coming through their ear buds like the voice of a warm and trusted friend. Production credits for Breakthrough were split between two new helmers. One is hitmaker John Shanks, who's particularly known for his work with strong female artists like Kelly Clarkson, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Alanis Morissette, and the Wreckers. The other new guy behind the boards is Ken Caillat, most renowned for his work on one of the top-selling albums of all time, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours... and also, not insignificantly, for being Colbie's father. Bringing things full circle, the new album was recorded at Village Recorders in West L.A., where Ken Caillat met his future wife and Colbie's mother-to-be when they were both working there during the making of Tusk. Both John Shanks and Ken Caillat recorded basic tracks with a band playing live in the studio while Colbie sang along in the vocal booth. Beyond that similar approach to the early sessions, though, their approaches diverged. "My dad's recording is very organic and reveals the rawness and vulnerability in a song," she says. "And John Shanks is a great pop producer. His songs are perfect for radio." "On this record, Caillat continues, "I was able to contribute a lot more of my production ideas into the recording. I had a better sense of how I know the songs should sound and feel, and what instruments should be added or taken away from them. Because I didn't get to do that on Coco, to really be able to make these songs completely my own was a special experience for me." No one wanted to fix what wasn't broken about Coco, of course. At this time in music-business age where new stars aren't even being added to the firmament anymore, Caillat's success was as close to overnight as it gets. Two years after its July 2007 release, the debut is still in the top 100, and stands as the 12th biggest selling digital album of all time. "Bubbly" is the 21st best selling digital track ever, with sales of more than 2.8 million, and was a No. 1 smash at Hot AC radio for 19 weeks and AC for 17. The music videos for the first album's songs were streamed over 22 million times. "Bubbly" was named song of the year at the last BMI Awards, and Colbie tied for artist of the year, for that song and "Realize." She was named the winner of Billboard's Rising Star award, too, on top of nominations for the American Music Awards and Teen Choice Awards. If the bubble ain't broke, don't pop it, right? Coming off such rare and covetable success, expanding the sonic palette beyond the mostly acoustic base of Coco for the new album wasn't undertaken lightly. "I didn't want to stray too far too fast from what my fans are used to from me," she says. "But I did want to grow and experiment and work with different people. I searched for the right balance." Caillat expanded her circle of co-writers as well as producers, sitting down to work with hitcrafter-turned-Idolmaker , ISBN13: B002FUI4A6 ISBN10: B002FUI4A6 Material Type: audioCD
