![]() He made an interesting point in an interview earlier this year on this topic. ![]() I realise that I make these tunes that sound a bit like classic songwriting, so then I have to do all those other things” – such as trimming tracks down to a stream-friendly three minutes – “to tie it up in this pretty little bow and make sure that it still has a shot.” I listen to f***ing Spotify, I use Apple Music, I’ve not got my head in the sand. Ronson used to have “this thing about being called ‘the retro guy’” but “now I care more about making s**t sound modern, and I work harder to make sure that’s the case. He is just as perplexed by the necessary evils of certain studio wizardry in the streaming age. ‘It’s crazy to think that “Rehab” didn’t go to number one’ (Collier Shorr) “The only things that were sticking were things that had this tinge of melancholy,” he says, “and I probably didn’t realise I was doing it, ‘Oh, I’m making a breakup record’.” For Late Night Feelings he started making music straight from his own heart(break). He had moved out to LA and into a swanky studio but anything he did write for Late Night Feelings was “instantly forgettable”, he says, adding: “I didn’t know if it was going to be any good.’’ Until, that is, he realised that he had to move past the “idea I’ve always had that I do serious or deep music on other people’s albums”. I was in this rebound relationship and I just realised I needed to pull my s**t together.” “I was really wavering for about eight months, just feeling a little cloudy all the time. Meanwhile, he was drinking and partying a lot. “I was doing all these other things that were exciting, working with Diplo and Kevin but seemingly to stave off the pressure.” It’s no wonder he was sweating: “Uptown Funk” went through so many tweaks that “it took seven months to get it to the finish line”. “I was running away from the responsibility of working on the album because I was worried about following ‘Uptown Funk’,” he says. He adds: “I’ve done songs for movies before and… some of the music was not very good.” He describes the A Star Is Born track as “a really powerful song – but that it has everything to do with the movie”. He is now one of the most recognisable music producers in the world and yet he is self-deprecating to a fault. We meet the week after the Oscars, where Lady Gaga, Ronson and songwriters Andrew Wyatt and Anthony Rossomando took home the statuette for their supernova smash “Shallow”. He also of course helped shape Amy Winehouse’s soul-noir sound in the mid-Noughties. The 43-year-old has worked with Adele, Paul McCartney, Lily Allen, Nas and, on 2014’s unavoidable earworm “Uptown Funk”, Bruno Mars. ![]() If anyone knows how to tackle outsized personalities, it’s Ronson. Sometimes you go home and need 30 minutes of something funny before you fall asleep.” “It can be draining,” he explains, “when you’re dealing with outsized personalities and all their wonderful emotions. ![]() Comedy skits like this are one of the ways he unwinds after a day prodding buttons, or egos, in the recording studio. He is taken with my OutKast T-shirt – he hops on the nearest computer and plays me a clip from a Key & Peele sketch, where they masquerade as the hip-hop duo’s André 3000 and Big Boi. The super-producer is jetlagged during a run of interviews in his publicist’s office, where Kasabian gold discs glint from the walls. ![]()
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