The man behind Miley Cyrus’s first ever Grammy
Proud moment: On the red carpet at the Grammy Awards
Reaching over one billion streams on Spotify, Miley Cyrus’s Flowers became the most streamed song of the year. This official break-up anthem won two Grammy awards at the 2024 Grammys in February, including Best Pop Solo Performance and Record of the Year 2024.
Behind Miley’s first-ever Grammy is Brian Rajaratnam who won the award for the Best Engineer/Mixer for the work he did for the song. The song was produced by Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson. “We brought out many different versions of the song till we hit that right spot where we were all super proud of it but we never thought it would win a Grammy Award,” Brian says.
Even after receiving word that Miley had 4 nominations and Brian had 2 nominations at the Grammys, the team was still not sure of their chances as Miley has had many popular songs before but never won a Grammy. “We are super elated about it. Personally for me it has been a one-of-a-kind ‘pinch me’ moment that solidifies my choice of switching career paths back then,” Brian says.
Born and raised in New Jersey after his parents moved from Sri Lanka to the USA, he moved to New York to pursue the conventional path of becoming a doctor until halfway through pre-med “I realized that this wasn’t for me,” he said as the Sunday Times caught up with him to speak about his achievement.
“After researching online on possible music-related courses I joined the Berklee College of Music in Boston and completed my degree in Audio Engineering in 2017.”
It all began in Sri Lanka. “ I first fell in love with music while visiting my aunts in Sri Lanka where I started to play the piano, and from there on I learned to play multiple instruments. My passion has always been to do something in the music industry,” Brian recalls.
“Back then in high school, the only music career option we were aware of was to become a music teacher, but when you do more research into the industry you realize that there are so many business roles that you can explore within the music field, like mine – a music adjacent job that also requires science.”
After college, he was with many studios and worked his way up to being an assistant, joining Kid Harpoon (Tom Hull) whom he is currently working with on many projects. “After starting to work you come across these surreal moments of meeting artists you have grown up listening to and working with Miley Cyrus is one of them.”
Hopefully there will be bigger projects ahead that will leave a Sri Lankan mark in this huge industry, he says.
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