Anthony Ramos
FROM Brooklyn
AGE 27
LABEL Republic Records
HAMILTON HOOKUP On opening night
of the off-Broadway production of Hamil-
ton in early 2015, music team member and
producer Will Wells pulled aside Ramos,
who was cast as John Laurens/Philip Ham-
ilton. Ramos recalls him saying: “Everyone
on that stage is very talented, but you? You
special.” Ramos had just started writing
songs, and Wells suggested he consider
releasing an album. They became co-writ-
ers, later forming their official partnership,
Whole Team Winnin.
SPIKE’S SIGNOFF Post-Hamilton, Ramos
starred as Mars Blackmon in the Netflix
adaptation of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta
Have It and later played the best friend of
Ally (Lady Gaga) in A Star Is Born. Before
filming season two, Lee called Ramos one
morning to say, “It just hit me — you got
to do a song, and I want you to write it.”
For Ramos’ first major solo performance,
he sang “Cry Today, Smile Tomorrow” —
a soulful track he and Wells wrote.
MAJOR MEETUP Modest! Management
helped Ramos arrange label meetings in
late 2018; after speaking with Republic
Records president of West Coast cre-
ative Wendy Goldstein for three hours,
he had made up his mind. He signed a
recording contract with the label in June,
then hunkered down with Wells in Los
Angeles’ Laurel Canyon neighborhood,
writing 21 songs in 30 days. “It was sup-
posed to be a five-song EP, but Wendy
looked up at me after 13 songs and went,
‘This is an album.’ ”
DOUBLE THREAT Ramos describes his
debut, The Good & The Bad, out Oct. 25
on Republic, as “real stories with banging
beats” that reflect his upbringing in a Puer-
to Rican household in Bushwick, Brook-
lyn. (He plans to release some tracks in
Spanish.) Ramos is also wrapping his next
role, as the lead in the movie adaptation
of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights,
coming June 2020. “Your boy is just trying
to manage it all,” he says. “But it’s dope.”
—REBECCA MILZOFF
Ahead of recording All
Mirrors, Olsen laid down
bare-bones solo versions
of each song on guitar.
But once in the studio,
she saw the songs were
changing form so drasti-
cally and felt compelled to
learn them on piano — the
first instrument she ever
played — as well as guitar.
“As a kid, I learned theory
for so many years,” she
says. “But eventually, I just
started memorizing all
the songs — my piano
teacher was pissed.”
Going forward, she says,
she’s less inclined to pick
up her guitar first and now
considers from the start if
piano is a better fit.
Olsen enlisted John
Congleton (Lana Del Rey,
St. Vincent) to executive-
produce All Mirrors, but
with her collaborators
spread across the globe,
she assumed a curatorial
role for the first time in her
career. “I’ve never had to
communicate so much
about so many things on
a record,” she says of as-
sembling an album without
being in the same room as
everyone. Bischoff, for ex-
ample, was recording with
Iggy Pop in Switzerland. “All
of the pieces were coming
in one by one,” she says.
“It’s the first time I made a
record where nothing was
completely planned out.”
PIANO THEORY
When Olsen lived in Chica-
go, she frequented venues
like Hungry Brain, Gypsy
Jazz (where a friend of hers
would play) and restaurant/
bar Ethiopian Diamond,
where she saw acts like the
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.
“I really am in love with
and obsess over Mildred
Bailey and Lil Green,” says
Olsen. “I missed making or
hearing that kind of music.”
As a result, she used horns
on her upcoming album —
something she had never
done before. “I have these
connections with people
I’ve known over the years,
and I wondered how open
they would be to it.”
BLUES AND JAZZ
STANDARDS
While going over arrange-
ments, Olsen says she
listened to the recently
departed avante-garde pop
legend “as an example of
how you can use strings in
a dissonant way for a me-
lodic song.” She points to
1969 track “It’s Raining To-
day” as a prime example: “I
knew I wanted something
big and epic and different
than the stripped-back ver-
sions I had done solo.” As
a result, she says Bischoff,
who has “slept on floors
and played punk shows,”
and her friend Babbitt, who
also plays bass, guitar and
synth on the album, creat-
ed a “world of dark clouds
around my songs.”
SCOTT WALKER CURATION
On her first three albums, Angel Olsen had trouble loosening her grip. “I have a lot of issues
with control,” says the 32-year-old singer-songwriter. But for the expansive All Mirrors, out Oct. 4
on Jagjaguwar, the Asheville, N.C.-based artist opened up her inner circle, recruiting string
arrangers Jherek Bischoff and Ben Babbitt. “It was a really testing process for me,” she says, “but
really rewarding.” Olsen also shares how a more collaborative process, and her early studies of
piano theory, actually worked in her favor. —DAN HYMAN
ONE TO WATCH
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.Angel Olsen
40 BILLBOARD • SEPTEMBER 28, 2019