In 1998, the US rock band Semisonic released a song, Closing Time, that has barely left the airwaves since. A smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic, the song matched a peerless melody to a strikingly positive sentiment – one that posited the “last call” at a bar not as the end of something but as the start of a whole new life. After the song hit, a trio of other smart Semisonic singles cracked the British top 40. But less than three years after their initial success, the band decided to break up. “We always knew that the time would be right at one point for us to get back together,” said the band’s leader, Dan Wilson. “But I can’t account for the fact that the right time turned out to be so much later than we thought.”
In fact, 22 years have elapsed between the last Semisonic album, All About Chemistry, and the new one, Little Bit of Sun, which will make its debut on Friday. A key part of the great delay had to do with what’s been on Wilson’s plate in the time between. Over the last two decades, he has emerged as one of the most successful, and least likely, songwriting and producing collaborators in modern pop. Though significantly older than many of the stars he has worked with, the now 62-year-old Wilson has scored hits with artists as hot as Taylor Swift (on songs like Treacherous), the Dixie Chicks (with their biggest chart-makers, including Not Ready to Make Nice) and Adele (for her ultimate bravura number, Someone Like You). The list of artists Wilson has worked with is staggering in number – at well over 100 so far – as well as in scope, from Nas to Josh Groban to Chris Stapleton. “I feel lucky and definitely surprised that it has worked out so well for me,” he said.
