Living Legends: Nile Rodgers On "Levii's Jeans," Madonna's Work Ethic And Internalizing Music
"The thing that makes my life exciting is the fact that I always feel like I'm ready," Nile Rodgers says.
The Lifetime Achievement Award honoree may be the textbook example of the axiom: "if you stay ready, you won't have to get ready." From a tour stop in London, Rodgers notes that he always has his guitar with him — typically his white 1960 Stratocaster, which Fender has since issued a replica of — and "always" has a recording studio with him. "I always believe that I can add something musically," he says.
There's little hubris in that statement, and there shouldn't be. The past 12 months alone have seen Rodgers tour with his band Chic internationally (including his first-ever performance in Korea), work on a GRAMMY-winning project with the most awarded artist of all time, and accept another five-year term as the Chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
This level of activity is far from uncommon for the four-time GRAMMY winner. Rodgers got his start as a session musician in the "Sesame Street" traveling band in the early 1970s, though his legend truly began when he co-founded Chic — a disco group whose sound and language have become the blueprint for much of contemporary pop and dance music.
Over six decades, Nile Rodgers developed something of a midas touch, writing and producing canonical earworms for the likes of David Bowie, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Diana Ross, Daft Punk (which netted the producer his first three GRAMMY Awards), and many others. Rodgers has so honed his skill and ear that it's le freaky; his contributions to the pop pantheon come with ease. "I never think about a song before I get to the studio, unless it's an idea that I had come up with the night before," he says.
Such was the case with "LEVII'S JEANS" from Beyoncé's Album Of The Year-winning COWBOY CARTER; the song itself was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 2025 GRAMMYs. COWBOY CARTER is the second time Rodgers has worked with Bey: The two celebrated a Best R&B Song win for "Cuff It" at the 65th GRAMMY Awards, while Renaissance itself took some DNA from Rodgers' Chic era.
Nile Rodgers spoke with GRAMMY.com about his genre-defying career and the artists who have helped populate it. Read on for insights into his nominated work, the now-iconic jheri curl activator commercial he penned in 1988, and much more:
I'm going to get right to business, and start with an existential question.
My favorite kind.
What makes a good and lasting pop song?
Everybody has a different formula and a different concept and a different approach. Rather than try and analyze what are the components of the great lasting pop song, let's just say that all great songs that last are what my music teacher used to tell me: they are always internalized. They're songs that you can't get out of your head no matter how much you try.
The way my professor taught me, he said: "The Itsy Bitsy Spider, went up the water spout down came the rain, and washed the spider out," and he says, "That's internalization. You can't help it." He says, "The national anthem. Go to a baseball game. Look at everybody's mouths. They start doing the lyrics, even though you would never buy the record." Can you imagine going up and buying that? But everybody knows it. It's internalized.
Speaking of great pop songs, I would love to know a bit more about your work on COWBOY CARTER. Is this the first country and Americana influenced album that you've worked on?
Not at all. I've worked with Keith Urban quite a bit. I've worked with David Lee Roth years ago when he did a collaboration with Travis Tritt and I produced a record by David. I've been in the mix with quite a few country players.
Did you bring those experiences to work when you were working on "Levii's Jeans" or when you were chatting with Beyoncé about various projects?
"Levi's Jeans" really started with my guitar part. [Producer The-] Dream and I were just working together out in the Hamptons, and I picked up the guitar and started writing to a lick he was singing. Or I played it and Dream said, "Damn, what's that?" And then started singing on top of it.
So one of those two stories is true. I remember me playing the whole thing. And the voice leading of the guitar playing has the melody and the vibe of [imitates "Levis Jeans" riff.]. So that had to have come before it was even called "Levi's Jeans" or anything like that, because Dream and I were just jamming.
From there, are you involved in the creative process? Do you work directly with Beyoncé or with Post Malone when putting this together?
It’s interesting how songs are composed in today's world. By providing that bed track, that's sort of all I needed to do. Then that sparks an idea, and then they write on top of that. I don't remember it even coming back to me and me having to fix anything.
Honestly, just playing it down the one or two times that I played it down — which is basically the way I always write — I never think about a song before I get to the studio, and unless it's an idea that I had come up with the night before or something. I just was in the room with Dream and mixed it. It was probably one of many songs that we wrote that day.
That was the day that he came to the studio really late; I was sitting there for hours. So that may have been the only song that we wound up doing, and maybe what wound up happening is that there was such clarity and such great direction that by the time we finished it, that's all we needed to do that day. I'm picturing the studio, the house, and the long-ass drive. My studio in Connecticut, in Westport, Connecticut, all the way out to the Hamptons.
You also worked on Renaissance, and "Cuff It," specifically. What was it like to work on projects centered on radically different genres? It seems to me that there's a bit of a parallel between your musical fingerprint and what Beyoncé is doing.
The way that I look at all music — be it symphonic or small jazz trio or quartet — I always believe that I can add something musically. I'm an old school arranger, so even if my playing isn't the type of playing they want, I could write string parts or I could write horn parts, I could write whatever to make the music a little better.
The most fun I have is just doing stuff. I really say this with no ego: I just believe in my heart that I always have a musical idea that's worth sharing. No matter what the situation is, especially if it comes to composition. The reason why I feel so comfortable writing with people is because, with composition, you don't have to get perfect right then on the spot. You can get something close, and it's just inspirational and it can take you to the next place. I am lucky enough that most of the time I get my part right the first day or maybe the first hour, usually. But if a person calls me back, as some have, and said, "You know what, Nile? That's close, but I was thinking more like this," I go, "Oh, okay, cool."
In today's world, a lot of the recordings that we do, we're not necessarily in the same room at the same time. In the old days, we were always in the same room at the same time. Now, I record in my hotel rooms all the time. I always have a recording studio with me.
For either COWBOY CARTER or Renaissance, was that the situation for your work?
With Renaissance, they had already gotten to a certain place; Renaissance was almost like Daft Punk. So Daft Punk had been working on Random Access Memories and on the track that wound up becoming "Get Lucky" for eight years; Dream had told me that many of the songs that he's done, he's worked on for years. And so he'll play me an idea and I’ll jump on it.
What happened with "Cuff It" was a situation like that. I came in near the end on that one, as opposed to "Levi's Jeans," where I was actually at the beginning. It started with guitar and whatever Dream and I did.
That speaks to your ability to just have that great idea and know how to fit yourself in. You can come in at the beginning, you can come in at the end and provide that flourish that makes the song a bop.
The point I was really making was that I feel like I can always add at any point during the process.
I'm on the new Coldplay record. So Coldplay, I happened to walk in the studio and they just asked me to join the circle, like, Whoa, hey, great. So I had my guitar walked in and started playing. That's unusual in today's world because rarely is the band there, and I happened to have my guitar. That was just a very sort of freak occurrence, and it wound up being cool.
The thing that makes my life exciting is the fact that I always feel like I'm ready. I drag my guitar with me everywhere. If somebody wants to write or perform, I'm down. I learned years ago to not be afraid of failing or making a mistake or having people criticize it, because that's sort of what music is all about. You definitely want to touch people's hearts, you want to get some kind of emotional response; most of the time you want them to like it. Certainly I've written a protesty type of song or two, and it was designed for the person that I was writing it about not to like it. However, I wanted it to be internalized.
You've worked on an incredible number of classic songs over the years that it's hard to pick something in particular to ask you about. Off the top of your head, is there a song that you played on or that you composed, that you produced that makes you smile?
There's been so, so many, but I would have to say probably the most shocking and successful was "Let's Dance" with David Bowie.
When David asked me to produce Let's Dance, he and I had just met. We just bumped into each other at a club and started talking, and I was amazed at his knowledge of jazz artists and composers and arrangers. He was deep into it; we tried to sort of one up each other, going more and more avant-garde, like, "Yeah, well, have you heard so-and-so's record?" "Well, but have you heard 17 West by Eric Dolphy?" I mean, we were really just going at it man.
He then called me and realized, okay, you're the guy I want to produce my next album. I go to his house in Switzerland, and he comes into my bedroom and says, "Now darling, I think this is a hit." And he starts playing a song that sounds very much like a folk song, and that wasn't what we agreed we were going to do, but he was really into it. He said, "I call it 'Let's Dance.'"
I said, "Man, I come from dance music. Let me do an arrangement." And basically, I restructured the whole thing. I had never heard "Let's Dance" until we went to the recording studio the following day and played it. Of course, as an arranger, you can hear it in your head sort of, but I write for an ensemble. When we did the demo, we didn't have a keyboard player. It was just two guitars, very James Brown style.
I said, "David, I want you to sing what you sang in the bedroom and sing it over this music." It really worked. When you hear the "Let's Dance" demo, you can hear how much fun he's having; you're going to hear that he likes it. Obviously, it's the biggest record of his career, but he thought that my arranging skills on a song called "Ricochet" were far superior to "Let's Dance," and he couldn't understand why people didn't like that more. And I thought, Wow, how weird is that?
Usually when I finish a record, I'm on to the next project. If you look at my discography, you'll see that. How could I possibly? The day I finished "Like a Virgin," the very next day I was in the studio with Mick Jagger.
You've worked with so many multi-hyphenate talents and big personalities. Who has been among the most fascinating people that you've worked with?
I certainly know Beyonce's got an incredible work ethic. The first time we ever worked together, we were doing a show where I was the music director for VH1, a television special for Diana Ross. And man, Beyonce was there when she had the group, and they worked so hard. But it was a television show, and usually you do work hard. You only have a certain amount of hours to get things right.
I have to say Madonna. The thing that was so incredibly special about Madonna was her work ethic. It was like her taking power back or control or something. All the musicians were my musicians, we’re working at my recording studio, the place that I called home and christened the Power Station. And she went out of her way to be the boss. It was like, "Madonna, it's cool. We know we're working for you."
But it was incredible; she worked so hard. No matter how early I got to the studio, she would always be there before me. So I called my doorman and asked them one day, I say, "Does Madonna call here and ask you guys has Mr. Rogers left so she can make sure she gets to the studio first?"
She would work out early in the morning, she'd swim and then go to the recording studio and get there before me. The studio's literally 10 blocks from my house.
It seems like you've done a lot with K-pop recently, and you're just finished your first concert in Korea. What excites you about Korean music?
What’s great about K-pop is that a lot of the artists that I work with like sort of sophisticated R&B-styled music. So I get to do interesting arrangements and very sort of old school R&B guitar playing, and they really appreciate it, man.
I had a big record last year with LE SSERAFIM called "Unforgiven." And then I just did G-Dragon, and he was so cool. It’s almost like I couldn't play enough guitar parts, no matter whatever I did. It was like, "Okay, cool. No, no, no, do some more. Do some more." So I just playing and playing, which I like to do anyway.
Coming to America is my favorite movie of all time, hands down. And when I learned that you did the Soul Glo jingle, my mind was blown. Why didn't we know about this?
I got that job because the person who was in charge of music at Paramount Pictures at the time, I used to do television commercials for him. His name was Steve Adele, and I used to play classical guitar for him, play Spanish guitar for a coffee brand called Savarin Coffee, and the character was El Exigente. And I used to play El Exigente's theme music.
But Coming to America, I composed everything. That's me singing and playing on all of the music that's spilling out the tenements and stuff like that. I did everything like the full orchestral score and the funny, interstitial stuff. And Soul Glo, the commercial.
I learned a lot from [director] John Landis about scoring film. He was saying that even when you're writing funny songs, you have to treat it like it's totally serious. And so then of course, since then, I've done "Beavis and Butt-Head" and all sorts of stuff that was supposedly really silly, but of course I write it in character. When I did Beavis and Butt-Head, and I wrote "Come to Butt-Head" with Mike Judge. I've done quite a few films where I had to do comedic songs, Soul Glo just happens to be one of the best ones.