J Ron Slomowicz: Superstars #1 Hits Remix, where did the idea for this project come from?
Hosh Gureli: I put together a CD that I called Hosh's Greatest Remixes Volume One, just for my friends. I felt that I've worked on some great records with incredible remixer/producers. The CD included Alicia Keys' "Diary," Dido's "Sand in My Shoes," and more of the recent stuff. There happened to be nineteen cuts on the CD and I gave it to a bunch of friends. With the merger of Sony and BMG, I was working on different projects like the Will and Grace soundtrack and I gave the Strategic Marketing team a copy of this CD. They thought the CD was cool and said why don't you put a compilation together and we'll put it out.
Of course I felt like a kid in a candy store because I had the chance to do it myself and make a wishlist of songs to pick from J, Arista, RCA, Jive, Laface, Epic, Columbia, and Sony.
RS: How did you choose the songs?
Hosh Gureli: I chose as if I was to say what are the biggest artists and the strongest remixes. Unlike other compilations that I have worked on, we could include the best of current and classics of the recent past. I've never seen a cd with Whintey's "It's Not Right But Its Ok" and Mariah Carey's "Dreamlover" which is one of the all time top ten dance records for most DJs. I love the "Milkshake" mix that DJ Zinc did for Kelis and with the great mix that Jason Nevins did for Kelly Clarkson we have several great remixes for the CD. That's a perfect catalyst because we always need a driver, something current. Alicia Keys loved Hani's mix of "Diary" and she doesn't like most of her stuff remixed. I had to call in a couple of favors like Junior's Mix of Maroon 5's "This Love." The same with Dido, the Al B Rich mix of "White Flag" was never released on promo, just a CD burn that was sent to a couple of radio stations but was in power rotation on Z100, KTY and WPYM.
RS: People often say that the shortcoming of dance music is that the community only promotes within itself. How is Superstars #1 Hits Remixed being promoted to those outside the nightclub world?
Hosh Gureli: We are really trying to concentrate outside the immediate dance music community. We're going to have videos that Promo Only have helped us put together with their video remixes which are going to be shown in six hundred gyms coast-to-coast. We are doing an entire Memorial Day weekend promotion with WKTU featuring one hour mixes from 8 of the A-list DJs (Jason Nevins, Hani, Armand Van Helden, Scumfrog, Hex Hector, Rich P, Victor Calderone, David Morales) on the cd and that's a huge kick-off to summer. We are doing a huge promotion with Open House Party which airs in a 160 markets, so we are hitting way beyond the top 20 markets.
RS: The compilation is not mixed but it doesn't seem to be aimed at DJs.
Hosh Gureli: We're certainly looking at the people who love dance music but not necessarily DJs - they have these records. The great thing about this cd is that thye are all number one hit and number one remixes all on cd. We purposely did not mix the CD because I am very conscious that we live in a very iPod
society. I put the tracklisting together thinking about the flow. Everybody has their own taste and might want to put it in their different order or there might be some cuts they love and there might be one or two that they don't. They can take their pick and then shuffle it the way that they want to.
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