XL Recordings: A Record Label With the Midas Touch : The Record : NPR
In the past 15 years, Richard Russell, the owner of the British independent record company XL Recordings, has shepherded his label to more than its fair share of industry success.
Last year the label saw its greatest heights yet, though to be fair, no other label climbed anywhere near as high. That’s because 2011 was the year of Adele, and XL is the singer’s home. (In the United States, Adele’s albums are promoted and distributed by Columbia Records, but she is signed to XL worldwide.)
Leon Chew/Courtesy of the artist
XL Recordings founder Richard Russell in his home studio in West London.
It’s not the first time Russell has seen an act on his roster burst onto an international stage. In 1997, The Prodigy scored a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with The Fat of the Land, and was part of a wave of “electronica” that swept across the Atlantic from England in the late 1990s.
The path from The Prodigy’s aggressive electronic beats to Adele’s soaring pop vocals was built slowly, but for Russell, the secret to running a good record label comes down to three simple elements that remain central regardless of genre.