Whitney Houston. Michael Jackson. Celine Dion. Rihanna. If you know these names, then you know the work of Claude Kelly and Chuck Harmony. Between the two, they’ve penned such hits as “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus, “Grenade” by Bruno Mars, “Russian Roulette” by Rihanna, and many more. The hit songwriting-production team is now based in Nashville, where they operate as their own musical duo, Louis York, while still finding time to write for other artists. Harmony and Kelly stopped by the American Songwriter studio to answer some songwriting questions and play a round of dinner, duet, or duel. See the results below.
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AS: What’s the first song you remember writing?
Claude Kelly (CK): The first song I remember writing that I thought was good was a song I wrote with a producer named Troy Taylor and it was called “Never Alone.”
Chuck Harmony (CH): You know what I was thinking? I was thinking back to this song I wrote with this guy named Tony Rich. That was like the first big-time guy and the song was called “Traveling Alone.”
CK: That’s weird!
CH: I swear! No wonder we’re single [laughs].
CK: We’re gonna start writing about being together a lot more because that’s crazy.
AS: What song have you written or produced that you wish had been a hit?
CH: Tori Kelly, “Personal.” That was a hit.
CK: Big-time hit.
CH: They put it on a Target bonus.
CK: Yeah, I was kind of a little offended by that. “Personal” is insane. On the R&B side, we had a song called “Lipstick” [by] Tamia that was so good. It’s a cult favorite for our fans. It’s a really good song. We have some songs that are in the hard drive right now that I think people slept on that we’re going to find new homes for or new ways to use. A couple have been recorded by people.
CH: The one we did with Seal. We got to get in touch with Seal.
CK: That’s a crazy song. That is an insane song we have a Seal. There’s a few others, but that’s [at] the top of my list.
AS: Who would you dinner, duet, or duel with: Hall & Oates, Simon & Garfunkel, and Daft Punk?
CH: That’s a good list! I love all of these people.
CK: This is evil.
CH: For me, the duet would have to be Hall & Oates because when we first started, we used to call ourselves the Black Hall & Oates.
CK: And we actually happen to know John Oates. We wrote a song with John Oates that no one’s ever heard.
CH: We just need Hall. Come on, join the party [laughs].
CK: I would do the duet with Hall & Oates. I love them. I would dinner with Simon & Garfunkel because Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, I think they’re brilliant minds. I’d love to just pick their brain about life and music and world thoughts and politics and religion. They touch on that in their music. “Sound of Silence,” hello? And then we have to take out Daft Punk.
CH: I just talked about their song.
CK: We’ll have to take them out in the duel because they’re not going to beat us in the duel, so night-night Daft Punk.
CH: It’s been real [laughs].
CK: Thanks for all your contributions. They’ve broken up, we don’t want that kind of energy. We don’t want that break up energy around us.
CH: But I love Daft Punk.
CK: I actually love all of them. That was good.
(Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)
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