Dr. Dre. Blink-182. Led Zeppelin. A 1964 Brazilian bossa nova landmark. John Mayer. Post Malone. James Taylor.
If that looks like a shuffle button left running overnight, well, that’s the point. It’s the lifetime playlist of one of the most successful A&R minds of his generation.
Tyler Arnold – Chairman & CEO of Mercury Records – warned MBW this was going to happen, before we even started annotating his ‘Key Songs’ list.
“I’m giving you a heads up that this is going to be all over the place,” he said, “and the stories that come with it are going to be all over the place too.”
Yet that restless, genre-blind ear isn’t a quirk of the Tyler Arnold story – it’s the through-line, and it runs all the way to the label he runs today, which flatly refuses to pick a lane.
Arnold grew up in suburban Connecticut, in the Hartford area – “classic suburbia, not much to do”. His older brother Jeremy, five years his senior, owned a folder of CDs that would become the single most important musical education of his life.
Later, Arnold studied finance and business management at Northeastern University in Boston, “as a backup plan; music was always my first choice.”
That first choice won. After an early, formative summer internship in Los Angeles at age 18, Arnold landed a six-month internship at Republic Records in 2014 – and turned it into a full-time A&R assistant job within five months.
In 2015, on his 23rd birthday, he made the first signing of his career: a then-unknown, SoundCloud-bred artist named Post Malone. His second, the following year, was super-producer Metro Boomin. Clairo, Jeremy Zucker, Chelsea Cutler, and comedian-genius Bo Burnham followed, as did a partnership with Big Loud and Morgan Wallen that would help turn Wallen into one of the biggest artists on the planet.
“I’m so proud that we’re all over the map – I’d attribute that to growing up with so many different influences.”
In 2022, alongside Ben Adelson (now President & COO), Arnold relaunched the storied Mercury Records imprint – and their bets have paid off spectacularly. Post Malone’s country reinvention (and his Wallen duet I Had Some Help); Noah Kahan’s slow-burn ascent from New England open mics to a worldwide No.1 album; Wallen’s record-breaking commercial run. Through these and other successes, Mercury has become one of the most quietly consistent frontline labels in the business.
“People always ask me about the influences of Mercury, and what genre we represent,” says Arnold. “I’m so proud that we’re all over the map – I’d attribute that to growing up with so many different influences.
“We’re not stuck just doing pop, rock, country, or hip-hop. We’ve signed a bossa nova band from Argentina; at the same time, we’re doing comedy records. That’s part of what excites me and influences me now – how different it all is. Not being afraid of diversity.”
But Arnold’s not here to talk shop. This is an interview purely focused on how music has soundtracked his life so far – from a Barnes & Noble price-tag heist at age nine, to a lonely first summer in Hollywood, to the song that, by his own admission, changed everything…
1) Dr. Dre, Forgot About Dre (2000)
I’m going to start here, with Dr. Dre and Forgot About Dre, off 2001. It is my favorite album of all time.
I was nine years old when this came out. I went to a Barnes & Noble, peeled off the price tag, and put it over the parental advisory sticker on the CD – and my mom bought it for me. So thank you, Mom.
I have an older brother who’s five years older than me. He’ll come back more than once in this list, because he and his friends are the reason I heard most of this music in the first place. They put me onto Dr. Dre and Eminem and everything that was going on in that world.
“I’ve actually never really said this to him, but I give my brother a lot of credit for my influences. Without him, I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to any of it.”
There’s just something about this album that blows me away. From start to end – the storytelling, the production, the way Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, every single contributor plays off each other – it’s so cohesive.
My brother had a folder of CDs that ran the entire map. From Dre and Eminem to Nas’s Get Down, to Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 2, which I’d play before basketball games in high school, all the way out to pop-punk and the Bloodhound Gang. I’d just flip through it and pull out whatever.
It always amazes me how often you get that: an older sibling who’s super into music, doesn’t go into music himself, but has this huge impact on the younger one. I’ve actually never really said this to him, but I give him a lot of credit for my influences. Without him, I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to any of it.
2) Blink-182, Mutt (1999)
If Dr. Dre is my favorite album of all time, Blink-182 is probably my favorite artist of all time. The last time I really let loose and was a fan – capital F – was probably at a Blink-182 show.
To me, this is all nostalgia: the pop-punk, rock side of the late ’90s and early 2000s. Once again, my brother had a huge impact – he introduced me to Blink, Taking Back Sunday, The Used. There’s something about the Take Off Your Pants And Jacket and Enema Of The State albums that had a massive effect on me. How fun, youthful, and nostalgic they both are…they were basically the soundtrack to my childhood.
This song [Mutt] was in American Pie, which is a movie I remember sneaking into with my brother when I was about eight or nine years old. For the record: I had great parents who really looked after me!
To this day, if I want to escape and step back from the industry, this is the band and the album I put on. It makes me feel like a kid again.
3) Corinne Bailey Rae, Like A Star (2006)
I don’t remember my parents having a ton of musical influence on me. The Beatles and Beach Boys come to mind for my mom and Bryan Adams and Shania for my dad, but they were always incredibly supportive of my love for music and exploration of it.
Corinne Bailey Rae is one that really stuck with me though. I remember my mom loving this album in 2006 and we would play it all the time in her car. [Bailey Rae] is such an unbelievable talent and her voice always sucks me in. It’s so beautiful, effortless, and emotional.
Everyone remembers Put Your Records On, but the album as a whole is unreal. To this day I’ll put it on and it brings me back to those days. A very special album and Like A Star kicks it off in the best way.
4) Led Zeppelin, Stairway To Heaven (1971)
I said this was going to be all over the place, so here we go.
My middle school used to put four or five slow dances into every school dance – and the last song, every single dance, was Stairway To Heaven. Lyrically, that makes no sense, but it’s eight minutes long! So you’d find the girl or guy you had a crush on, and you’d ask them to dance… for eight minutes.
It made me really appreciate the song – to the point where now I love the guitar solos, the build, all of it. I’m a sucker for structure, and that song has a wild, crazy structure. It also became my gateway into the whole world of Led Zeppelin.
Especially in this attention economy – two-, three-minute songs, 10-second TikTok bites – here’s one that’s eight-plus minutes, and it feels like it goes by in two seconds. And the individual parts are just as amazing as the whole.
5) John Mayer, Stop This Train (2006)
I think this is one of the greatest albums ever made, top to bottom. John Mayer grew up in Connecticut too and has always been a huge influence of mine.
This one is particularly tied to a specific moment: I moved to LA when I was 18 for my first internship ever in music. I worked 10-, 12-hour days for free, I was in the studio, and I fell in love with the process – and the industry. It made me realize I wanted to be an A&R, because I was right there watching records get made.
“Looking back, it was an unbelievable experience of maturing and learning how to be an adult, working through lonely situations – but in the moment, it was tough.”
But I didn’t know anyone in LA, and honestly, it was very lonely. This was before Uber, before Instagram, before all of that. I was in a short-term rental apartment in Hollywood, taking the Metro to work every day. I had no money – I was eating five-dollar Subway footlongs for lunch and dinner. It was a month or two before I really knew anybody.
Continuum was this soothing, emotional, beautiful project that became the soundtrack to that time. Looking back, it was an unbelievable experience of maturing and learning how to be an adult, working through lonely situations – but in the moment, it was tough.
For the specific track, I’ll go with Stop This Train, which is just about life moving fast, blurring past you, being in the moment and being appreciative. The other one I always come back to from that album is Bold As Love – which is, of course, a Jimi Hendrix cover. That one was probably top 10 on my Spotify Wrapped last year, all these years later.
6) Stan Getz & João Gilberto, Getz/Gilberto (1964)
Another thing people don’t know a lot about me: I was a trumpet player growing up. I was actually first chair in the Connecticut state jazz band.
I haven’t played in a long time, but jazz had a really big effect on my life. I got very into the Miles Davises of the world, Chris Botti, the famous trumpet players. And even though there’s no trumpet on this album, I think Getz/Gilberto is one of the most perfect records ever, front to back.
The trumpet is the one shred of musical talent I have – I just wish it was a more transferable instrument, like guitar or piano. I’ve always dreamed of being in the studio with one of my artists, getting on the keyboard and playing something for fun. I just can’t.
I can’t land on one specific track here, but the immortal The Girl From Ipanema would more than do the job.
7) Post Malone, White Iverson (2015)
I know this series isn’t supposed to be about songs you worked on – but I have to pick White Iverson. That song literally changed my life. I would not be here, speaking to you in this office, without it.
I’ve actually never told this story before, but I pitched a band on my first day of my internship at Republic that wound up getting signed. The label flew them in two days later, a deal was done, and I thought, Oh, wow – I might be good at this. This might be my spot.
By the time White Iverson came around, I was 22, an assistant at Republic to three executives – doing calendars, phones, travel. I was the young kid on the A&R team trying to prove myself, so whenever Avery, Monte, or [then-head of A&R] Rob Stevenson got sent anything, they’d forward it to me and 99.9% of the time, it was terrible.
“I’ll forever be thankful to Post and Dre [London], because they went where the passion was – they could see how much it meant to me.”
Post’s SoundCloud page was one of those emails and I remember the day I heard it. I listened and loved it, but what struck me most was that I kept going back to it – later that night, the next morning, over the weekend. It stuck with me. The blogs were starting to really support him, artists were co-signing him, I loved his other early SoundCloud music and I saw one of his early Bob Dylan covers – I was hooked. He was unlike any other artist I had ever come across.
The first night I ever met Post was at The Westway, a converted strip club turned concert hall on the west side of New York, where they did monthly hip-hop showcases. He had maybe three songs out, and he played White Iverson five times. I saw three of his shows in two days, then I just followed him around the country – Atlanta, Toronto, LA. I just kept showing up – and I was surprised no one else was.
I’ll forever be thankful to Post and Dre [London], because they went where the passion was – they could see how much it meant to me. They gave a 22-year-old assistant a chance.
Bonus Track: James Taylor, Carolina In My Mind (1968)
James Taylor is one of my all-time favorites, and this song specifically has become really special to me and my family, because South Carolina has become a very important place in our life. It’s where I got engaged. It’s where I got married. It’s where my family and I spend a lot of our holidays now.
James Taylor’s greatest-hits album has become the soundtrack to when I turn off from the industry. We land in Charleston or Savannah, head to a place called Palmetto Bluff, and as we’re driving through the marshland, past the water, through all that nature, my wife puts it on and we collectively exhale.
Carolina… is just a beautiful, beautiful song. James Taylor is one of the best songwriters ever, and this is the soundtrack of our life down there. He’s one of the greats.
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