Norah Jones - Little Broken Hearts

Norah Jones and Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) first worked together when the producer called upon her to contribute vocals to his acclaimed 2011 album ROME. It was Jones’ singular voice that caught Burton’s attention as he began to conceptualize his homage to classic Italian film score music. He already had Jack White in mind for the male role, and he and his collaborator Daniele Luppi realized that Jones’ voice would give the project the perfect balance it needed. Jones contributed three standout songs to ROME including “Black” (a live version of which is included on this set) and their connection proved deep enough that they decided to collaborate again on Jones’ next studio album.

In a first for her, Jones arrived to the studio empty-handed – no tunes, no arrangements, just a few ideas in a notebook. The songs were all built from the ground up with Jones and Burton sharing all the songwriting credits and performing the majority of the instrumental parts; Jones on piano, keyboards, bass, and guitar, and Burton contributing drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, and string arrangements. The process was a complete change for Jones, but once they started it didn’t take long for her to warm to the challenges of creating on the fly using whatever resources she and Burton had between them. (Later, they brought in a band—including drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Gus Seyffert, and guitarist Blake Mills—to bolster many of the tracks.)