Stargate (production Team) - Influences and Style

Influences and Style

Stargate chiefly produces songs in the genres R&B, pop, and hip hop. Hermansen and Eriksen grew up as R&B and hip hop fanatics in Norwegian suburbs, where most children listen to Euro pop and American rock. Their interest in music started in the 1980s with breakdance and rap. Eriksen and Hermansen were raised on pop music, growing up listening to music of 1970s pop group ABBA and Germany-based pop outfit Boney M. In an article by The New York Times, Barry Weiss, president of Jive Records, who had hired Stargate to produce songs, "Those influences lend themselves to them making very melodic pop records, with great hooks and choruses." According to the team, they have always loved American music, citing acts such as Prince, Michael Jackson, Usher, Destiny's Child, and R. Kelly and the English band Depeche Mode as their inspiration. The team also cited producers Antonio "L.A." Reid and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds of the 1980s R&B band The Deele, and R&B-pop production team Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis as their early influences.

In their usual production style, Stargate first creates an instrumental backing track—also common in pop and hip hop productions—from which a collaborator would write lyrics and add vocal melody into. In an interview with About.com, the team explained their style:

We always start out with a musical idea. Great effort goes into creating a solid melodic core. We both play the keyboards and program, but in general Mikkel plays the instruments and controls Pro Tools, while Tor has the executive overlook as well as lyrical input. However, we both are hands on and have no rules or limitations. When we have some killer beats and musical starting points, we hook up with one of our favorite topline writers, who gets cracking on the lyrics and melody. We make sure there's a lot of melody in the track, so it can inspire the writer. Together with the topline writer we work, often tweek and simplify the song, and never quit before we feel we've got a killer hook.

Ben Sisario of The New York Times described Stargate's music as "sugary, lilting R&B in the Michael Jackson vein leavened with the kind of melody-rich European pop that paints everything in bright primary colors ... Their work carries on a tradition of Scandinavian bubble-gum artistry that stretches from Abba to Max Martin". Sisario added that, unlike other's producers in the United States, "Stargate signature is more difficult to detect, because to some degree the duo’s style is an adaptable method, not a specific sound". Steve Lunt, an A&R executive at Atlantic Records, pointed out, however, that "if you put a bunch of Stargate songs together you will see the thread running through them".