Photo: Adali Schell
Why choose between rock and pop — when, like Andrew Watt, you can excel at both?
When ‘Let Me Love You’ by DJ Snake and Justin Bieber became a mega‑hit in 2016, keen eyes noticed the presence of a certain Andrew Watt as a co‑writer and co‑producer. When Watt’s name subsequently appeared as a co‑writer and co‑producer on no fewer than four of 2017’s biggest hits — ‘Havana’ by Camila Cabello (featuring Young Thug), ‘It Ain’t Me’ by Kygo and Selena Gomez, ‘Lonely Together’ by Avicii (featuring Rita Ora) and ‘Wolves’ by Selena Gomez and Marshmello — the pop world took notice of the arrival of a major new talent.
The following years provided more proof of Watt’s astonishing writing and production prowess, with credits on hit songs by 5 Seconds Of Summer, Cardi B, Lana del Rey, Benny Blanco, the Chainsmokers, Ellie Goulding, Shawn Mendez, Juice Wrld, Post Malone, Charlie Puth and more. Come 2020, Watt also had a Grammy Award under his belt, for Cardi B’s Invasion Of Privacy, followed by a Producer of the Year Grammy a year later.
All this made it completely unexpected when Watt co‑wrote all tracks and produced most on Ozzy Osbourne’s 12th studio album Ordinary Man, released in February 2020 — particularly as Watt also played most of the guitars, and had credits for vocals, keyboards, bass, programming, string arrangements, and choir arrangement. For a pop producer to be so heavily involved in the making of a highly regarded heavy metal album was uncharted territory, as the producer himself remembers. “When I was working with Post [Malone] on his Hollywood’s Bleeding album [2019], we were looking for cool people for him to collaborate with. So we got Ozzy and Travis Scott on the song ‘Take What You Want’. Ozzy enjoyed the process of working on that song so much, that he afterwards asked me if I would make an album with him.
“I didn’t really feel like I was the right person, because I wasn’t making that kind of music any more. I was honoured, but I was doing pop music. However, Chad [Smith] from the Chili Peppers, and Duff [McKagen] from Guns N’ Roses, who are close friends, both said: ‘Dude, are you kidding us? You have to do it! It’ll be so much fun. We’ll come over to your studio. Let’s write some stuff and show it to Ozzy, and see if it’s any good.’ So we wrote some basic tracks with Ozzy in mind, and when we showed them to Ozzy, he loved them. We then started writing songs with him. It felt natural and came really easy.”
Andrew Watt with LA rock royalty including Eric Avery, Josh Klinghoffer, Eddie Vedder and Chad Smith.Photo: Danny Clinch
Extraordinary Man
Since Ordinary Man, Watt has continued to straddle the worlds of rock and pop. The major pop credits have continued, with Post Malone, Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, Sam Smith, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, the Kid Laroi, Jungkook and Calvin Harris, and most recently the hit songs ‘Tough’ by Lana Del Rey and Quavo and ‘Die With A Smile’ by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. And Watt has also co‑written and produced an astonishing sequence of albums by rock legends: Elton John (six songs on 2021’s The Lockdown Sessions), Eddie Vedder (Earthling, 2022), Ozzy Osbourne (Patient Number 9, 2022), Iggy Pop (Every Loser, 2023), the Rolling Stones (Hackney Diamonds, 2023), and Pearl Jam (Dark Matter, 2024). It’s an extraordinary list of credits, and one wonders how Watt manages to work successfully in so many different genres, with such a wide variety of artists.
“It’s the human element,” replies Watt. “It is very important to me in every type of music that I make. Pop music doesn’t have to be computerised, with vocals that are tuned to pieces. Instead, you can make sure that you can hear breaths, or someone stretching out a note over the bar. The computer is a tool. It’s like another instrument, like a synthesizer or something. Pop music can have the human element, and I like the pop music that I make to breathe.
“Now, if I’m making a hip‑hop record, part of the charm of that music is that it’s loop‑based. It’s supposed to have a monotonous groove that you can lean into, so you’re focused on what the rapper is saying. And they’re not always perfectly in time. They’re attacking the beat and you hear them run out of breath and then take a deep breath and dive into the next section. That’s the human element. As I work between all these different genres, that’s the thing I try and make sure remains present. I’m not super interested in making music that doesn’t retain some human elements.
“You want some music to be on the grid, and some music, you don’t. Rock music cannot be gridded. There is rock music that’s gridded, and I don’t listen to it. Rock music is not supposed to be gridded. If you’re lucky enough to record a band like Pearl Jam, or the Rolling Stones, or the Chili Peppers, you want to hear them play to their own human heartbeat. With current pop music, the grid is important because the beat is something to latch onto. But you can be a little in front or behind of the grid in certain moments, so it feels a more human.”
Iggy Pop (left, with Andrew Watt and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers) is among the many rock stars whose careers have enjoyed a new lease of life courtesy of Andrew Watt’s production and writing.Photo: Danny Clinch
All Roads Lead To Pop
Born in 1990, Andrew Wotman grew up in Long Island, New York, learned to play bass and then guitar, and briefly attended the New York University Music Business programme. Like many musicians, he was making music “on the first version of GarageBand. Once I outgrew that, I got Pro Tools and I was recording my music. I was recording myself on a computer from age 12, 13, 14, 15. So I was self‑taught as an engineer, and a producer.
“After I dropped out of the NYU, I played every bar and every restaurant in New York. I wound up getting gigs, and playing for many different artists, including hip‑hop artists and soul artists. At one point I found myself doing a pop gig, with Cody Simpson. I wasn’t sure about that, because I wanted to do rock music. The Cody Simpson gig led to me playing in Justin Bieber’s band. I then left the Justin Bieber tour to be part of California Breed. From there, I got a record deal with Republic Records, as a solo rock artist.”
California Breed were formed in 2013 by singer and bassist Glenn Hughes, who had played with Deep Purple and Black Sabbath; drummer Jason Bonham, son of John; and Watt, in the role of guitar hero. The Los Angeles‑based power trio released one self‑titled album in 2014, which topped the UK rock and US hard rock charts, and dissolved in 2015. In that same year Republic released Watt’s debut EP, Ghost In My Head, which was produced by him and Alain Johannes, of Queens Of The Stone Age fame, and Louis Bell, about to become one of the world’s top pop producers.
The big time remained elusive for Watt until a second hook‑up with Bieber changed things. “When touring with Justin we had developed a great relationship. Early 2016, we made a couple songs together, and one of them, ‘Let Me Love You’, with DJ Snake, wound up being a number one in many countries. I was on tour at the time, travelling in a van. When I heard my song on the radio, I said to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing in this band when I can be producing records that the world will hear?’ I went back to LA and started to shift my focus to producing and writing pop.
“I come from the computer generation. I was using Napster, and I was listening to Led Zeppelin, A Tribe Call Quest and the Backstreet Boys all on the same day. I loved all different types of music. But I wanted to be a rock artist, and I was ambivalent about going into pop. For a while I was hiding my pop work from my rock friends and my rock work from my pop friends. Once the pop songs started being successful, my rock friends were like, ‘Awesome!’ and I realised that it could all work together.”
Quick, Not Fast
For Watt, an essential part of making everything work together is through speed. “I move in a way that helps the artist feel like they’re flowing, one take after another. And when they’re listening back to their vocal or listening back to the band, it needs to immediately sound good. I say this a lot, and feel like a broken record saying it, but I believe my job is results‑based. So I try not to talk too much with the artists about the kind of sound I can get them or what it should be like. I just record, and then show them. And if they like what they hear coming out of the speakers, we’re on a roll.
Andrew Watt (left) with Paul LaMalfa in a photo taken during the sessions for the Rolling Stones album Hackney Diamonds.“It’s important to get results quickly. You can later start moulding and shaping what you have recorded. My engineer Paul LaMalfa and I have a workflow that has become almost telepathic at this point, and that makes things go very quick for the artists. I find that a quick pace is extremely important in the studio, to make sure no‑one ever feels blocked. However, if you’re moving too fast, it can bring an anxious energy. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We move quick, not fast. Fast is a bad thing. Moving quickly is a different thing.
“Listen, ‘Sweet Sounds Of Heaven’, the Stones song, is seven minutes long, with Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga and Mick. They’re not singing perfectly in tune. They’re not ending at the measure exactly where they’re supposed to. But there’s so much emotion in what they’re doing together. You have an opportunity with modern technology to tune that. But why would you? Your job is to pick the right stuff, not suck the soul out of the performances.”
Preserve The Sound
Andrew Watt credits legendary producer Rick Rubin with a piece of advice that has enabled him to work successfully with so many different artists. “I got lucky enough to meet Rick when I was first starting to have some success as a producer and doing singles. I was excited to play him what I thought were hits. He listened and said, ‘These songs are great. The production sounds great. But are these different artists? It all sounds like one artist. You got to make sure you’re not giving them your sound. You got to give them their own sound.’
“I really took that to heart. So when working with new artists that don’t have big legacies, it’s a big thing that we work on: ‘What’s your sound?’ With the artists that the world has grown to love, I think: ‘What would the fans want to hear?’ They want to hear the band sounding like the band. Why would you try and change the Rolling Stones or modernise the Rolling Stones? Let’s just make an effing amazing Rolling Stones album with great songs and all the things you want to hear on a Stones album. We’ll leave the modern stuff to the way it’s mixed.”
Watt has worked on and off with Paul McCartney, and although none of the results have yet been released, it was McCartney who suggested to Ronnie Wood that the Stones try Watt as a producer for their first new album of original material since A Bigger Bang (2005). Soon the producer had Mick Jagger on the phone. “I had several conversations with Mick about a new Stones album, and he said that they did not want to do the same old thing. So I told them that it was very important to me, being a giant Rolling Stones fan, that the album was live and not gridded, and that there would be no click tracks, and that it should be Mick and Keith and Ron in a room together playing to their own bpm and pushing and pulling, until they sounded right. At the same time, it would be my challenge to make sure it’s mixed in a modern way. So it’s as loose as any of their records, but it has a modern sound.
“There was a lot of music. They had 60 songs, and we were choosing the best stuff. And then we wrote a few songs in the room, which was just magic. They were ‘Angry’, ‘Get Close’, and ‘Depending On You’, the songs on which I have co‑writes. Once we got to know each other and everyone’s playing, sometimes someone had a seed or a riff and it just turned into a song that everyone decided was worth exploring. ‘Angry’ was a song that Mick had started. It wasn’t fully fleshed out, and it developed over time. Keith came up with that amazing bass line. Keith is an insane bass player, so hooky. Once Keith played that riff and made it his own, the song sounded like the Stones.
“Amongst the tons of material they came in with was stuff that Charlie [Watts] had played on. A lot of the process was making sure we chose stuff that fit with this collection of songs, and making sure that Charlie’s drums were mixed similarly so that they didn’t feel like a different thing. From a musical standpoint, it also was very, very, very important to me that the musical tracks had Keith and Ron weave and Keith’s presence all through them, whether it was a Mick song or a Keith song, and that Keith’s parts were done before Mick got on there. So that Mick was singing to Keith. I believe that yielded authentic‑sounding Stones, because that’s how it was before. Keith could have done his parts in New York and Mick could have sung in London, and it would have made an album that people would have listened to. But it wouldn’t have been the same as them being in the same room together. That’s the magic of this record.”
For the album closer, the Muddy Waters song ‘Rolling Stone Blues’, the magic was created by just Richards on acoustic guitar and Jagger on vocals and harmonica. “It was just Keith and Mick sitting in a room, miked up, and we thought it was a moment that should be captured on tape, and Paul [LaMalfa] and I mixed on the console, and that’s it. The first time I worked to tape was with the California Breed album. The producer was an amazing guy named Dave Cobb, who was like, ‘Why do you want to record to tape? The drums sound a little bit better, but it’s just a lot more work.’ But I was a purist back then. I was like, ‘If we’re making a rock album, we should record it to tape.’”
Watt has clearly come round to Cobb’s view since then, and uses tape sparingly. Apart from ‘Rolling Stone Blues’, Hackney Diamonds was entirely recorded to Pro Tools. This also involved overdubbing. “They’ve done that since the beginning: guitars, a solo till you got the take you want, fixing things here or there, punching in, punching out. But the rhythm tracks and the foundation of the songs were done live with the band in the room. Daryl [Jones] was unavailable for the sessions, so we had to do the basses ourselves. They were not overdubbed. I played bass with the band while they tracked, and sometimes Keith did and sometimes Ron. It goes without saying that it was the honour of my lifetime to get to play bass on some of these songs. We also got Bill Wyman to play bass on some of them. Hackney Diamonds is the Rolling Stones playing songs together. It’s as simple as that.
“We recorded most of the album on an SSL at Henson Studio D, with old microphones and all the old gear. So it was recorded in an old way, and I then found a way to make sure that it was mixed to compete with other modern records. It’s why Serban mixed the album. Serban is not just the ultimate pop mixer of all time. Serban is the greatest mixer of all time. He can mix a rock album. He can mix a pop album. He plays guitar and can shred like Eddie Van Halen and he understands all that stuff. What’s cool about him is that we could talk about Van Halen and the Rolling Stones, and about Taylor Swift. There’s no other mixer who has that breadth of knowledge.”
Jamming
Many of Watt’s songwriting and production activities took place at his Gold Tooth studio in Beverly Hills, until it got flooded in the winter of 2022‑23. It was where work started on the recent Pearl Jam album, Dark Matter, during sessions for Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder’s Earthling solo album in 2021. Once again, speed and playing in the same room proved important ingredients, as the Pearl Jam musicians were extremely impressed by the fact that two great songs emerged from a first try‑out session.
“During the Earthling sessions, Eddie wanted the band to experience working with me at my place. He was like, ‘This is so much fun. You guys got to come try it.’ They did, and we immediately created a couple of songs, ‘Scared Of Fear’ and ‘React, Respond’, which made it to the album. We realised that it would work for us to work together. Then in 2023 we found a pocket of time at Shangri‑La studio to finish the album.
Andrew Watt backstage with Pearl Jam at London’s Hyde Park.Photo: Danny Clinch
“I was on guitar mostly when writing with them, because the songs were happening so quickly. Someone would have a riff or an A section and a B section. They’d show it and the band would start to groove. Ed would start a melody because he’s great when he hears something for the first time. I was jamming with them, because it’s such fun, and also because I could be inside the song. I’d stop playing once everyone was playing.
“Pearl Jam is my favourite live band. Show me a band that plays a better live show. So that’s what the album had to be. Like with the Stones, it had to be them in a room playing and weaving off of each other and no click tracks, making it sound like the Pearl Jam we all love. People have talked about me bringing my pop instincts to the album, but I don’t know. I follow what’s there and I follow my instincts. It’s not that thought‑out. It’s just more listening to what the gut tells you. So recording was a similar process as with the Stones, and then it was again mixed in the way I thought it sounded best, and with Serban. We got a big sound that everybody loved.”
All Kinds Of Everything
Speed, having fun and being in the same room are also central to Watt’s writing and production work in pop music — for example on the single ‘Tough’ by Lana Del Rey and Quavo. “I had worked with Lana on the songs ‘Doin’ Time’ and ‘Fuck It, I Love You’, on her Norman Fucking Rockwell album [2019]. Quavo invited me to the studio where he was with Lana, and I brought Cirkut, an amazing producer I’ve been working with a lot. Lana played us a demo for her country album she was working on with other writers [including Jack Antonoff]. We loved it, and quickly turned it into a beat that would also work for Quavo to do his thing on.
“So it was Cirkut, Lana, Quavo and me in the room together. Quavo was helping write her part. She was helping write his part. We made the beat very quickly and I put guitars on and Lana sang. That record was made one night over a couple of hours. It was such an exciting and fun session. A lot of people think that there are all these intentions. But sometimes you just get into a room with people and it kind of happens, with no intention. A lot of the time I’m just trying to follow the artists wherever they want to go.
Andrew Watt: The fact that I could sit next to Paul McCartney and he asks me my opinion — that’ll never make sense to me!
“I feel so lucky to be in the room with these people, and that they even care what I have to say is amazing. The fact that I could sit next to Paul McCartney and he asks me my opinion — that’ll never make sense to me, you know? But I love making all kinds of music. Just because I made some rock albums doesn’t mean that I don’t make pop music any more. Being able to work in so many different genres, to make pop music, make hip‑hop music, make dance music, make rock music, is the greatest thing ever. If I was just making one genre of music, I would be bored. That’s what keeps me wanting to work this much. After I make rock albums, I get to make a pop album. And then I want to make a rock album again. It’s so fulfilling to work over all these different genres.
“I also think that we are going beyond genres. There are two things that have to do with that. Number one: music festivals, where you could sit in one spot, and see Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, the Rolling Stones, LCD Soundsystem, Avicii, Migos, all those different acts. Then you have streaming, where people don’t have to listen to a whole album any more. Instead they are making playlists of all their favourite songs. People want to listen to what they want to listen to, and they don’t care about the genres.
“This has found its way into music and artists. Post Malone was one of the first huge modern artists who does not care about genres. He would do a folk song and a trap song on the same album. And if you look at our favourite artists, the Beatles, the Stones, even Iggy Pop, they could do anything. They do all different types of music: electronic, rock, blues, country, everything. Genres are limits. The second you pull that idea out, music is limitless. That’s the kind of music I enjoy making.”
Going For Gold
Some time around 2017, Andrew Watt set up his own studio in a rented house in Beverly Hills, which was called Gold Tooth. He also used the name for his record company, a joint venture with Atlantic Records, to which he signed Iggy Pop in 2022, resulting in the Every Loser album (2023). Watt was forced to close Gold Tooth in the beginning of 2023 because of flood damage. At the time of writing, he is putting the finishing touches to two new studios in another building that he owns.
“I’m very excited about this,” remarks Watt. “We’ll be starting to record there this Autumn. It has two studios with two live rooms, and it will be a haven. Monitors are Genelecs with two 18‑inch subs, and smaller PMC twotwo.8s for a true, clean perspective. And there’s not a single mix I worked on that’s been finished without listening to it on my iPhone speakers. That’s how the world listens to music. When I’m mixing with Serban, we’ll both listen on our phones for a bit, to see what’s cutting through. Making sure that the bass comes through on the phone is important to me. The new studios will have a lot of the same gear as my first studio, but we’re still adding to our gear list. You should ask my engineer, Paul.”
Paul LaMalfa has worked almost exclusively with Andrew Watt for the last six years. This photo was taken at Shangri‑La Studios in Malibu during the sessions for Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter.
Engineer and mixer Paul LaMalfa studied Music Production & Engineering at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, before working as a staff engineer at Henson Recording studios from 2007 to 2010. Following this, he went freelance, working for eight years with producer John Shanks. Since 2018 he has worked almost exclusively with Andrew Watt.
“Both the old and the new studio have tons of instruments,” explains LaMalfa, “with many guitars, two drum kit setups, many keyboards, and a really nice old Steinway V upright piano. We had no desk in the old studio, but tons of mic pres, like Neve 1073, API 312, Helios Type 69, Quad Eight. We also had Retro Sta‑Level and Revolver and UREI 1176 compressors, Empirical Fatso, API 560 EQs, and so on. We have large Genelec 1234 mains with two 18‑inch subs. It’s a loud system. And PMC twotwo.8s, the older model. When we were over in England last, we heard the Kii Audio speakers, and we were blown away by them. So we’re going to try a pair of those in the new studio.”
“The old studio had no console, but the new studio A will have a 32‑channel Cadac desk that came from Wessex Studios,” adds Watt. “It was used for the first Sex Pistols album, the first two Pretenders albums, and London Calling by the Clash. It’s a very, very special board.”
“Andrew also found an old API,” elaborates LaMalfa, “which we may put in the B room. We had UA Apollos in the old studio, but are now using Antelope Galaxy interfaces. Before going to another studio, Andrew and I talk extensively about the gear we want to use. When we had our own place, it was easy because we had finessed everything for the perfect workflow. It’s important for us to have tons of instruments ready, and two drum kits, one rock — we use a Gretsch — and one smaller, more funky and drier kit, which usually is a Slingerland, each with different mic setups and in different rooms.
“Also, for speed, we tend to use outboard while tracking, and are in the box most of the rest of the time. When you move between studios, it has to be that way, for consistency and speed. Any kind of processing we do after the recordings, like in the wee hours of the morning when we have some time alone. We may still plug in some outboard, but are relying heavily on what’s in the computer.
“That being said, on the Stones album we added a lot of saturation on Mick’s vocal, both out of and in the box, to give it the vibe that we wanted. I used an old Altec compressor on his vocal, and sometimes we run tracks through Andrew’s old Revox tape machine. That’s normally more of a drum thing, but it’s also great on vocals. Plug‑in‑wise, the go‑to for the Stones album was Tupe by Goodhertz. We used that a lot on Mick’s vocal.
“We print any outboard effects before sending the mix to Serban, and what happens after that is always a conversation. Serban is obviously amazing with vocals. He’s amazing with everything. But Serban’s mixes tend to lean on the more modern side of things, so there were times when we were like, ‘OK, let’s just vibe this a little bit more. Can you throw Tupe on there?’ It was never a matter of him just doing his thing. When we mix with Serban, or anyone, we like to be present in real time. With Serban we schedule about four hours on FaceTime every day, and listen via his own audio server, which gives us a private streaming link.”
Miking Up: Sony C800G
Andrew Watt and Paul LaMalfa’s go‑to vocal mic is the Sony C800G, which they use not only for pop and rap music but also for weathered classic singers like Jagger, Ozzy, Vedder, Elton and Iggy. “The C800 is the greatest microphone because it has this shine on it, that you cannot get with any other microphone,” insists Watt. “It really cuts through. If you want a warmer vocal, you can take away high end with EQ.”
“Yes, it is a ‘pop’ mic,” says LaMalfa. “But the thing is you’re never going to miss anything with that microphone. If needed you just tame some of the high end. It’s very easy to do. It’s funny, many of the artists that we work with are skeptical initially, ‘Uh, this is not something that we’ve used.’ But almost always when they hear their vocal back they’ll say, ‘Wow, that sounds incredible.’
“Sometimes we’ll trash the vocal up a little bit if it fits the record, like we did with Mick, but at least we’re starting with amazing pristine recordings. Another advantage of always using the C800 is that it allows us to move quickly and not have to change setups between songs. Often we are working on multiple songs in a day, and it’s easy to have that starting point.
“Our signal chain for the C800 used to consist of the Tube‑Tech CL‑1B [compressor] and the Neve 1073 [preamp], but a couple of things have changed. For pop records I started using Grace Design channel strips, which are ultra‑clean. And since then I’ve come upon Gordon Model 5 mic pres. When we were going from studio to studio it wasn’t uncommon to run into noise issues when tracking vocals. I found that it often was the patchbay or the tie lines that were causing the issue. But I can place the Gordon mic pres remotely, next to the microphone, and not worry about any cable runs. It goes line level to wherever you need. These Gordon mic pres are amazing. I fell in love with them immediately.
“For guitar cabs on the Rolling Stones album I ended up using Neumann U67s with some sort of ribbon, whether an RCA 77, or an RCA 44, or a Royer, whatever. I had tons of different ribbons to complement the condenser. I also often used room mics in the guitar booths, usually another 67. Not so much to get stereo, but to add some depth to the guitar sound. With Pearl Jam I used dynamic mics a lot more, like Shure SM57s and Sennheiser MD421s — sometimes complemented by a condenser such as a U67 or U87, other times with a ribbon. I like to track guitars through API mic pres or UTA MPEQ‑1s that we have.
“For the last song on the Stones album, ‘Rolling Stone Blues’, with just Mick and Keith, we went back to older recording techniques: all ribbon mics, straight to an ATR two‑track tape machine. Most of the sound was an RCA 44 placed between Keith and Mick. Keith used a Gibson L5 acoustic with a pickup, and the signal went to a Fender Twin, on which I had a Neumann U67 and a Royer 121, while we had an RCA 77 in front of Mick for his vocals and harmonica. For safety I also recorded to Pro Tools, and we tried to cheat a little afterwards as we tried to change the mix a little bit. But every time we changed it, Andrew and I would say, ‘It’s just not as cool. It’s not better.’ So we left it as it was on the two‑track tape.”