How Not to Record a Movie Star’s Vocal

Or, here's an excerpt from the memoir, ROOTS & RHYTHM for ya!

Jan 31, 2025

An excerpt from the upcoming memoir Roots & Rhythm—recording actress/vocalist Gwyneth Paltrow on Holly Williams’ The Highway.

First, she almost didn’t make it to the session. President Obama was in town, and the roads were blocked. I had just come from Beverly Hills, though. I advised Holly, “Tell her to take West Olympic to Butler.” Which she did, and traffic was fine. Once Gwyneth arrived, I was told she’d have to leave soon for Reese Witherspoon’s house. As with Jackson Browne earlier in the day, the prelude of visiting left little time for her vocal. She was there to sing a two-part harmony on Holly’s seven-minute opus titled “Waiting on June.” We had about thirty minutes left to get it. I did the math. This was a fail in progress.

As expected, we didn’t come close to finishing. Gwyneth would return to the studio after Reese’s party. That was the plan. At first, I thought we were all headed to the party. I misread the signs.

Instead, we gathered in the control room and waited—extra studio time purchased just to sit. After three slow-motion hours, Holly checked in. It was impossible to leave Reese’s party—it wouldn’t be right. Gwyneth said she could finish up in the morning, at 8 a.m. What?

Gwyneth kept her word, sang well, and we finished with time to spare.

Acutely exhausted, Andi and I drove to LAX and boarded a plane. We were going in the right direction, the jetstream in our favor. Good-bye, Los Angeles. Hello, Nashville. Back to our beloved Music City, where life made more sense. And where most of the time, I didn’t have to push the proverbial musical boulder up the hill.

Sense, however, would be deferred. Boulder descending.

Back in my home studio, Holly was struck with doubt about the recorded key of “Waiting on June.” I wanted to get it right for her. We had a problem, though. Didn’t we just spend two days, two thousand miles away, getting a vocal on Gwyneth (in what was now the wrong key)?

I told Holly to go home for the night and that I would see if I could change the pitch of the track and vocals. There’s software that allows producers to change individual notes or bring the pitch of a whole song up or down. If the software is good (mine is), I can usually go up or down a whole step or more without detection. If it worked, Holly could still rerecord her vocal and play a new guitar part. Gwyneth’s performance would have to be digitally altered—pitched up, as we say.

Along with engineer Richie Biggs, I worked until the track and vocals were as good as they could possibly be. Holly told Gwyneth about the software trick. Her response was, oh, I don’t know about that. When she asked to hear it, I groaned with dread and frustration. I knew what it meant. Chris Martin from Coldplay, Gwyneth’s then-husband, listened and promptly vetoed it. I can hear the tuning, he said. Well, I could too, but once Gwyneth was tucked back underneath Holly’s vocal in the mix, it would be unnoticeable. Honestly, what other option was there at this point? We couldn’t recut the whole song and go back to LA just to record another vocal with Gwyneth, could we?