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Invision/AP
Fill 1
Fill 1
July 15, 2014
In The Mix

Tough and Loving Linda Perry

Rocker Linda Perry has an ear for a hit—but on her VH1 series, the celebrated music producer tells her artists when their work doesn’t make the cut.

Jon Matsumoto

Linda Perry knows what’s it like to be a star.

As the frontwoman for 4 Non Blondes, the singer-songwriter was instrumental in the San Francisco band, which sold 7 million copies of its 1992 album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!

Perry also knows a thing or 2 about generating hits for other recording artists. Since the early 2000s, she has established herself as a crack producer and songwriter who has helped spawn hits for the likes of Pink, Christina Aguilera and Alicia Keys.

All of this makes the charismatic Perry the ideal focal point for VH1’s new docuseries, Make or Break: The Linda Perry Project.

The show, which debuts this month (check your local listings), features the straight-talking studio whiz mentoring a variety of musicians looking for a career breakthrough. One will be selected to record an album on Perry’s record label. Emmy contributor Jon Matsumoto managed to pull Perry out of her Hollywood studio to chat about her television venture:

It sounds like you’re aiming to create something very different from other music-oriented reality shows like American Idol. How so?

The people from American Idol like Kelly Clarkson are going to be successful with or without the show. But why haven’t other winners kept a career? When somebody gets voted off, do viewers even know why?

Maybe they didn’t connect because they sang too high, they were singing the wrong kind of material, they didn’t have the right intention behind it, there was no emotion in their voice…. The list is endless as to why people make it and why others got booted off. My show brings you the why.

In the show, you’re not just a producer, you’re a therapist — you work with these young artists to get their talent and emotion to shine through.

I’m only following in the steps of the great producers before me. That’s what a producer is supposed to do. It’s the producer’s job to help create the vision and bring out the best in that artist.

How difficult has it been adjusting to working in front of the camera?

Just before our first shot, I freaked out. It hit me that there’s a show that’s about to shoot that’s about me and how I work in the studio. But I got in front of the kids, I opened my mouth, and 3 weeks later I shut it. I never re-shot anything.

They would say, “We missed that. Can you do that again?” I said, “If it happens and you didn’t catch it, then it’s gone. Bring more cameras next time.” At the end of the day there were so many cameras! 

It’s interesting to watch your interactions with the artists and how you push them.

My intention is to help people, but I do it by being honest. I do care, and that’s why I can be abrasive. People sent me music that was shocking — I would call and tell them, “You shouldn’t even be sending this stuff out. You need to craft your music.” But I also give them some tools like, “You’re trying to be too much like Ani DiFranco and not enough about who you are.”

There’s a touching scene in which you give a hip-hop artist such heartfelt support for a job well done.

This show is about real art and real feelings. It’s about people waking up at 3:00 in the morning because they can’t sleep and the only thing they know how to do is go to the guitar or the piano and write about it. It’s not about your glam squad or your ratings.

We want to show kids that music comes from an emotional breakthrough. It comes from being vulnerable, from getting angry, from getting out of your ego so that the creativity can come to the surface.

Originally published in Emmy magazine issue no. 2014-05.

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