28 MusicWeek 07.09.12 INTERVIEWWAYNEWILKINS
Wayne Wilkins’ Ego has landed. Ego Frenzy, that is. He’s one of the UK’s most successful songwriters and producers of the last few years and the publishing company he launched in 2010 has just topped the Billboard Hot 100 with Flo Rida’s Whistle. Music Week finds out more about big plans ahead
PUBLISHING BY PAUL WILLIAMS
T
he UK songwriter/producer behind hits for the likes of Beyoncé, Cheryl Cole and Natasha Bedingfield is whistling a happy
tune right now after his publishing company landed a No.1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Wayne Wilkins launched Ego Frenzy two-and-
half years ago with his own Miami-based management team of Danny Dominguez, Greg Frankel and Erica Grayson as a place to sign and nurture fledgling songwriting talent. It has now seriously put itself on the map following the US chart-topping success last month for its British writer David Glass on Flo Rida’s Whistle (left).
“[Whistle] is a little bit of a calling card, but the truth is everybody is getting to know each of our writers now” WAYNE WILKINS, EGO FRENZY
“It is a little bit of a calling card, but the truth is
everybody [in the industry] is getting to know each of our writers now so they are all getting in with big writers on their own,” says Wilkins who has been inundated with congratulatory messages from record executives about Whistle’s achievement. “Of course, it helps because basically it is ‘You
WAYNE’S WORLD
guys know what you are doing and you’ve picked someone who’s been able to write a No.1 record in America.’” Wilkins suggests it will be Glass himself who will
reap the biggest rewards from Whistle’s success as more executives will now be aware of him and what he can deliver. “If you are David Glass and you send in a song
people will listen to it seriously now. For me the most you can ask for if you are pitching in a song is for people to really concentrate and give it a shot,” says Wilkins who hails from Croydon but for a number of years has worked out of Los Angeles. Glass has been known to Wilkins for about a
decade having first come across him as a guitarist for Natasha Bedingfield whom the Ego Frenzy co- founder co-authored a string of hits, including
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