In the Groove With Verve Records’ Jamie Krents as Label Racks Up Grammys for Samara Joy, Madison Cunningham
Shirley Halperin Executive Editor, Music Universal Music Group is home to dozens of labels spanning every genre, from pop to hip-hop, rock to R&B, country to Latin and niche styles like Christian, classical and Jazz. To run one of these companies is to associate with top talent — household names like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Drake and Lady Gaga — and the pressure to perform is equally massive. Which makes a label like Verve, which launched in the 1950s with the music of Ella Fitzgerald — and whose current roster includes left-of-center signings like Tank and the Bangas, Kurt Vile and Arooj Aftab — a sort of refuge in the giant commercial enterprise that is the world’s biggest music company. But Verve’s value to UMG is significant, and this is not lost on Sir Lucian Grainge, its chairman and CEO, who has given the label the leeway to invest in traditional artist development. What does that mean? For some familiar context: it’s letting an artist like Bruce Springsteen put out two albums achieving less-than-stellar sales so that he can reach a “Born to Run,” his third and career-launching release. Verve has its own success stories that follow this trajectory, like Jon Batiste, the former Stephen Colbert bandleader and master musician from New Orleans, whose “We Are” won album of the year at the 2022 Grammys.