Mark Ronson

Mark Ronson
Mark Daniel Ronsonis an English musician, DJ, singer, songwriter and record producer. Although his debut album Here Comes the Fuzz failed to make an impact on the charts, his second album Version reached number two in the UK and included three top 10 singles. This success won him a Brit Award for Best British Male Solo Artist in 2008. His third studio album, Record Collection, was released on 27 September 2010, peaking at number two in the UK...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMusic Producer
Date of Birth4 September 1975
CityLondon, England
And then, also, when you're doing something that doesn't sound like anything else on the radio at the time, you almost need to, like, ironclad it to make sure it gets through, you know?
You have to put these hooks in it, you know? You've got to make sure you got all that ear candy in it to get it through the gate.
I think, you know, for me, whatever I need to slot into to make that music the best it can be or help the artists, or whoever I'm working with, achieve whatever vision they have in their head for a song.
So sometimes if I'm working with a rapper, like Ghostface Killah or Nas, producing usually means, in hip-hop, that you make the music. You make the beat, and you give it to them. And they write the rhymes.
You just pick up a little bit of whatever the ones you think are appropriate, and you try and, you know, combine them. And then you bring in other people that are great for the things that you're not so good at.
So when I was working with Amy Winehouse on "Back To Black," you know, she had all these beautiful songs, incredibly well-written and just her on an acoustic, nylon-string guitar. And she'd play them for me, and then I would kind of drum up my idea of what I thought - make a demo with what I thought the drums should be doing, the guitars - like, quite a crude demo.
You know, it's weird. It's - it hasn't really changed my life in any kind of way that I can measure. I mean, it's obviously such an insanely amazing thing. You know, none of my other records I've ever had before even broke into the top 100.
You know, like, there's songs like "Valerie" and "Bang Bang Bang" that I was so proud of. And, you know, the level of success that they had - if they were little cult hits meant that, you know, I could sellout Webster Hall or Williamsburg Musical Hall or the El Rey theater in LA. Like, that was having made it to me. So the thought of having a number one song in my own career, like, never even registered.
I mean, my wife is always like - I don't write lyrics. So I couldn't, like, really technically write a song for anyone. I could write a very nice instrumental. So she always sort of gives me a hard time because it's just such a ridiculously impossible standard to live up to, that your step-dad wrote that song for your mom.
And I remember that about three years before that, her first record had come out. And I just remember really liking this one song off it called "In My Bed" and being a little bit enamored. This, you know, this young kind of Jewish girl from North London, you know, I have the same thing - from a Jewish family from North London - with this incredible voice.
My grandmother always used to wear this English perfume called Tuberose and then she died and then I dated this girl who wore the same thing. Every time I hung out with her, I could only think of my recently deceased grandmother. So sometimes a signature scent can be good and sometimes it can be bad.
Basically, there's a good friend of mine who works at EMI Publishing, a publishing company. He had asked me - he was like, you know, do you know this girl, Amy Winehouse? She's in New York for a day. She's kind of meeting people to maybe work with on her second album.
Stevie Wonder doing 'We Can Work It Out' by the Beatles is one of my favorite records of all time.
I don't have a crazy rider clause saying I have to stay at fancy hotels. I don't have a problem with staying at a Marriott. But I will admit that I've gotten just basic, regular service there.