By farmnewsNOW Staff

Roots Remastered

Bayer got into country music and the reason will have you smiling from ear to ear

Oct 3, 2023 | 12:10 PM

When new music is introduced in the radio industry, the inclination is to interview the artists. But in this case, that would have been really hard to do – because some of the artists aren’t even human.

They are actually…literally stalks of corn.

‘Shucks’ you might say. ‘That sounds like fake news.’ But there is more than just a kernel of truth to this.

All corny jokes aside, it all started when Bayer Crop Sciences developed a product for corn producers called SmartStax Pro. It controls corn rootworm which is one of the greatest threats to growers because it attacks crops underground, so it’s hard to spot. Bayer effectively silenced the pests and in doing so, wanted to make some noise about their success.

Enter the musical corn on the cobs.

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Roots Remastered is the world’s first music album made from corn. The album with six unique songs is meant to uplift farmers from the stress of corn rootworm by allowing them to actually hear what healthy roots sound like.

Bayer worked with Grayson Music Group who went out into a corn field and captured corn sounds like leaves rubbing together or the stalks banging into each other which provided some percussion. The real cream of the (corn) crop came from the stalk roots themselves. The team placed electrodes on the SmartStax Pro healthy corn roots, recorded the biorhythms and then converted those sounds into music with the help of audio engineers and Canadian singers and songwriters. McCann Calgary developed the creative strategy for Bayer and Weber Shandwick helped promote it. The album launched in September at a massive Canadian outdoor farm show in Ontario.

So, what’s it like to collab with corn? Have a listen:

It is a country roots album that celebrates the positive aspects of the day in the life of a corn farmer. Among the fan favorites so far is “My Own Road’ – a song that some have likened to George Ezra’s ‘Budapest.’

The entire album is on the Roots Remastered website.

So, should you listen to an album made in part by corn?

Maize well.