John Duff Creates a Thrilling Work of Musical Fiction

metroweekly.com:

Greatest Hits Deluxe Edition.A genre-spanning concept album, Greatest Hits is a collection of all-time greats by a fictional pop superstar with hits from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

Inspired by the sounds of Motown, doo-wop, gospel, disco, musical theatre, and the Great American Songbook, Duff channels his character’s evolution from crooner to pop-rocker on tongue-in-cheek tracks like “Forgotten How to F*ck” and “Hoe Is Life,” featuring The Life Tony winner Lillias White.“She really loved the lyrics of everything I do,” Duff says of Broadway powerhouse White, who also jumped on his 2021 single “High Heels” after hearing the song played over the phone. “And that means so much to me to have a singer’s singer say, ‘I want to sing that.’ It’s more validating than pretty much anything else that’s happened thus far.”In addition to the vocal talent, Greatest Hits boasts an album full of real musicians, in the project’s concerted departure from an electronic, computerized approach to pop.“Everything you hear was played by people,” he says, noting the “collaboration that comes with that.

When this person hears [something] and says, ‘I’m going to harmonize with that,’ and ‘I’m going to go over here with this counter,’ and create something that a computer could never come up with.