He’s a 52-year-old father of two from the Midwest. But that hasn’t stopped Dan Wilson from being the voice of today’s hottest young female hit-makers.
In the last few years, Wilson has co-written the smashes of artists like Adele, Taylor Swift, and Pink, in the process taking the Grammy for Song of the Year for a piece he wrote with another big female act: the Dixie Chicks.
“I don’t know a lot of guy stuff,” admits Wilson, who plays Joe’s Pub Thursday at 7:30 p.m. “I don’t know the names of any sports teams. I don't know what brands of beer there are, and I don’t know about parts of a truck.”
He is, however, “a really good listener.” Which makes Wilson an ace collaborator for a wide range of personalities, styles and, yes, for both genders. While Wilson has enjoyed his highest successes as pop’s “girl whisperer,” he also has crafted plenty of pieces for male performers, from country’s Dierks Bentley to R&B’s John Legend to the rapper Nas.
Still, Wilson’s career as one of today’s most successful songwriters began with a young woman. Bic Runga, a New Zealand singer, was in her early 20s in the late ’90s when she began suffering from writer’s block. A mutual friend hooked her up with Wilson and the song they wrote together, “Good Morning Baby,” ended up on the hit soundtrack for “American Pie.”
Wilson had been “waving the flag” for himself as a songwriter-for-hire for some time by then, though he already had a steady career going. He led the ’90s alt-rock band Semisonic, which had the worldwide smash “Closing Time” in 1998. As great a band as Semisonic was, it wasn’t advancing commercially and Wilson felt constrained by the group’s recording schedule. “If the band did an album every two years, I would write 80 songs in that time,” he says. “There wasn’t a way to get enough of my music out.”
More, Wilson liked writing with a wide variety of musicians. “They’re my people,” he says.
Sometimes they can even be his idols, like his next collaborator after Runga: Carole King. “It never would have occurred to me to ask her,” Wilson says. “But someone told her I was looking to collaborate.”
She bit. The result: “One True Love,” a gorgeous ballad was included on Semisonic’s final CD, 2001’s grossly underappreciated “All About Chemistry.”
But his big breakthrough came with the Dixie Chicks. For their 2006 CD “Taking the Long Way,” Wilson co-wrote six songs. One — “Not Ready to Make Nice” — was named Song of the Year at the Grammys. “Sheryl Crow had played a version of my song ‘Sugar’ for Rick Rubin and he introduced me to the Dixie Chicks,” Wilson says. “He was cheerleading me, saying, ‘You’ve got to try writing with him.’ We clicked in a big way.”
From there, the floodgates opened. Wilson started collaborating with up to 30 artists a year. In 2010, he was introduced to Adele, which led to co-writing three songs for her 11 million-selling “21” CD, including the No. 1 smash “Someone Like You.” “I had listened to Adele’s first album, and songs like ‘Chasing Pavements,’ like 50 times,” Wilson says. “I was real into her.”
Even so, he had no idea “21” would become one of the biggest albums of all time. “I just thought, she’ll probably sell a bit more than last time,” Wilson says.
He then went on to co-write Taylor Swift’s “Treacherous” and Pink’s “The Great Escape,” both songs released in 2012.
As commercially lucrative as his collaborations have been, there's nothing cynical or formulaic about them. Wilson has a flair for erudite lyrics, and rich melodies, that hark back to a more elevated era. His songs often have a philosophical bent, influenced by Joni Mitchell. As emotional as the songs may be, they flinch from sentiment, as well as from the empowerment message prevalent in current female pop. “I’m allergic to anything preachy,” he says. “If a song is trying to teach me a lesson, I get nauseated.”
Besides an upcoming solo album this March, he’s currently working with stars like Keith Urban and James Morrison, along with, of course, young women like Lily Allen, Florence Welch and Joy Williams of the Civil Wars.
As for his female bias, Wilson says, “Male artists are pretty constrained in terms of emotional truth. Female artists are free to really say what they feel. They can be honest in a deeper way.”
jfarber@nydailynews.com
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