Olivia Rodrigo's chief songwriting and production partner is Daniel Nigro.
Guts has cemented Olivia Rodrigo’s status as a major star. Her chief songwriting and production partner is Daniel Nigro.
In January 2021, Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Drivers License’ was a global hit, going three times platinum in the UK and six in the US. Rodrigo, only 17 when the song was released, proved anything but a one‑hit wonder, because several more multi‑platinum songs followed that same year, ‘Déjà Vu’, ‘Good 4 U’, ‘Traitor’ and ‘Brutal’. They all appeared on her debut album Sour, which also went multi‑platinum. The album and breakthrough hit won her three Grammy Awards, plus four further nominations.
These spectacular achievements were facilitated by Daniel Nigro, who co‑wrote eight of Sour’s 11 songs, and produced the whole of the album. Nigro had already enjoyed hits with Sky Ferreira, Freya Ridings, Caroline Polacheck and Conan Gray, but the success of Sour took his career to an entirely different level. And when Rodrigo and Nigro started work on the singer’s “difficult second album”, they did indeed find the going difficult.
“It was a hard process,” admits Nigro. “The first half of making Guts was difficult because there’s that constant voice in your head saying, ‘It’s not good enough!’ or ‘How are you going to beat this?’ There was a lot of pressure as we had Sour in the back of our minds, a body of work that was finished, mixed and mastered. And next you’re working on songs in your studio, listening back and going, ‘Well, that doesn’t feel as magical or special.’
“This was in the beginning. But with real hard work and real dedication, the special songs started to show themselves. If you keep showing up every day, some good things happen. I can remember days in the studio where I didn’t know if I could get through it, having been up all night with my baby and me being exhausted. Some days you fight through and nothing good happens. Some days you fight through, and then, all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Wait, did we just come up with something that we like?’ This started to happen more and more.”
The hard work paid off, and Rodrigo and Nigro managed to deliver another hit album. Released in September 2023, Guts reached number one in dozens of countries, contained the multi‑platinum hit single ‘Vampire’, and received six Grammy Award nominations, including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album.
Sour And Sweet
Olivia Rodrigo’s success did not come entirely out of the blue. She had enjoyed lead roles as an actress in two Disney+ series, Bizaardvark (2016–2019) and High School Musical: The Series (2019–2022) and, as her character in the latter series, had enjoyed a hit with the self‑penned song ‘All I Want’ in 2019. Despite this, she was unknown to Nigro when he first encountered her in 2020.
Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album Sour was a huge global hit.“A friend in the industry was curious to know if I had been working with Olivia, because she was following me on Instagram, but I had never heard of her before. Most of the time when somebody asks you to listen to something, you go ‘OK, whatever,’ and you move on. But when I listened to her song ‘Happier’, which had a 30 second video, I got the chills. I remember thinking, ‘What a clever concept, that’s really good.’ She had so much conviction in her voice and so much passion. As real as it gets. I reached out to her, and after many months, because of the pandemic, we ended up finally meeting, and ‘Happier’ became the first song we worked on together.
‘Happier’ was later included on Sour. Nigro, from his side, was at a point in his career when he was seriously starting to get into production, after having been an artist with the indie rock band As Tall As Lions, and a songwriter for the likes of Sky Ferriera, Kylie Minogue, Billy Idol, Lewis Capaldi and many others. By the time he started working with Rodrigo, Nigro had just enjoyed his first production successes, also co‑writing and playing many of the instruments, with Freya Ridings’ song ‘Castles’ and Conan Gray’s album Kid Crow (2020), which had gone to number 5 in the US.
Sowing The Seeds
Nigro wrote and recorded most of Sour and Guts at his own Amusement Studios (see box, later). Nigro describes their process: “Often Olivia comes in with a seed, like a chorus or something. Some days she comes in with just a lyric concept. She could be like, ‘I want to write a song with this title.’ And then we go from there. The great thing about working with Olivia is that everything is done from scratch. It’s usually just her and me with a guitar or a piano. We sit in the room, talk about it, and try out different ideas, and see what happens.
“The song is the most important part, and to be honest, most of the time we initially don’t think about the production, or what the sonic landscape of a song should be. It’s always about the song, having a great chorus that we both really like. From there we can dress it up however we want. Sometimes we write a song and I go ‘OK, cool. I know what this is supposed to feel like,’ and then I produce it and it works great, but sometimes she might question the arrangement or production, and I have to go back and try again, and again. It can take a few times for a song to find its identity.
“Olivia has strong opinions on the production, and doing it is a team effort. It’s a happy accident that my skill set happens to match her sonic tastes. She loves live guitars and live drums. At the same time, there’s tons of programming. On the first record all but three songs were predominantly programmed. But for Guts, Olivia really wanted things to be more organic, and have more live instruments. For example, ‘Bad Idea Right?’ has live drums, but the kick and snare are programmed. With most songs I program the drums first, and then a drummer enhances this by pulling and pushing.
Dan Nigro: People call me ‘Nudge Nigro’, because half the time I’m messing around with the feeling of programmed parts, to add human-ness by nudging things in the timeline. It’s surprising how much it can change a recording!
“The drums on ‘Ballad Of A Homeschooled Girl’ are entirely live, apart from a snare in the background that I added later, to get it to sound exactly like I wanted to. Olivia likes the push and pull of live instruments. I can create that in the box as well, but massaging the parts takes a long time. It’s days of work. People call me ‘Nudge Nigro’, because half the time I’m messing around with the feeling of programmed parts, to add humanness by nudging things in the timeline. It’s surprising how much it can change a recording!”
Vampire Beats
The sessions for Guts also made use of EastWest and Skylight Studios in Los Angeles, and Electric Lady Studios in New York. A large number of additional musicians and engineers were involved, including guitarist Sam Stewart, multi‑instrumentalist Ryan Linvill, drummer Sterling Laws, pianist Benjamin Romans, violinist Paul Cartwright, as well as engineers like Dave Schiffman and Dan Viafore. Many of them were in action on ‘Vampire’, the lead single and main hit from Guts, which Nigro uses to illustrate his and Rodrigo’s process in more detail.
“Olivia wrote the original seed for that song, and brought it to me when we were in Electric Lady. It had a different verse, but the chorus was pretty similar, with different lyrics in places. The basic concept was there and the ‘Bloodsucker, famef**ker’ hook was there. I thought that was incredible. We decided to rewrite the verses, and then rewrote some lines in the chorus, to make them really strong. We spent an entire day on this, really honing in on the lyrics, and making every line feel like it meant something.
“We got two verses and two choruses, and we recorded a demo, using an upright piano and an iPhone. Almost every song that we made on Guts started as an iPhone demo! When we got back to LA we were really excited about the idea. It was the first song I was going to produce, and I had Sterling [Laws] come over, and recorded a drum beat that I thought was appropriate for the song, which was a half‑time groove. I added a couple more instruments, and when Olivia came over the next day, I played it for her. To my surprise, she really didn’t like it. She said, ‘It shouldn’t be that, it should be much more intense.’
“It had not been my instinct, but I realised that she wanted the song in double time. So I programmed double‑time drums. I go through my drum sample library and pick out kicks and snares, weird little clinks and clacks, and extra cymbals, to make it all feel bigger, and put them in the timeline. She liked the double time, and from there we started to sort out the rest of the song. We wrote the bridge a week later. Sterling re‑recorded the drums, and Paul came in and laid down 100 tracks of strings. I used a Mellotron in the second verse, and added organ sounds from the [Roland] Juno 60, one of my favourites. The song really started to take shape.”
Dan Nigro’s keyboard rack, along with two of his Bock Soundelux mics.
Three Become One
Nigro and Rodrigo assumed that they were on a home run with the first song for the album, but there were still some twists and turns to come. “The funny thing was it was becoming a miniature opus. It was at the end of January 2023, and very few people had heard new music. Her management was very eager to hear something new, but I was not keen to send things out that were unfinished, because people are going to listen to it a couple times, and if they don’t like it, you have a problem, and if they like it, they’ll get demoitis.
“We did in the end invite some people over to the studio to listen to some music, and we were really excited about ‘Vampire’. It was a sketch, but all the parts were there, it just wasn’t finished. We played the song and they were like ‘OK... it sounds like three songs in one,’ and we were like ‘Yeah! That’s what we’re going for!’ And they were like ‘OK, but it sounds like it’s three songs in one.’ I think everyone was a little scared, wondering whether we knew what we were doing. It was a sign that I needed to work more on the song, and massage the parts so they really flowed together nicely.
“I finally managed to come up with a new demo, which we felt was close to finished, and we sent it to everybody. The reactions this time were very excited, but then Olivia and I couldn’t figure out the tempo of the introduction. The song gradually gets faster and faster as it goes on, and we couldn’t agree on the tempo of the first verse and chorus. She kept wanting it slower and slower, and I felt like it was too slow where it didn’t have enough urgency in the vocal. We kept making version after version of the song, with the bpm going back and forth around 135/133/132. This isn’t an issue when you’re programming, but because we wanted it to feel natural, we had to re‑record it. So we just kept on re‑recording the first verse and chorus, from scratch.
Dan Nigro’s two Yamaha upright pianos see plenty of use.
“Finally, we agreed on a tempo. She was happy, I was happy. And I said, ‘I’m going to go to Sunset Sound to record the piano in the intro, because I really love the way their grand piano sounds. And I think that the song needs to be on a grand piano.’ I loved the upright piano at Electric Lady, but it didn’t work for this song, and I then re‑recorded the piano in my studio, but we felt it sounded too clean, with not enough body. It really needed a grand piano.
“We all went to EastWest, and recorded the grand piano, and re‑recorded Olivia’s vocal. We were all very excited. And then she said, ‘It’s too fast,’ and I had to slow down the first verse by 1bpm. We couldn’t go back to Sunset Sound, so I went into Pro Tools and somehow figured out a way to slow it down and not make it sound as if there were any artefacts. I did it by hand, moving the transients in the audio. The amount of nudging I had to do was incredible. Luckily, the tempo of the first chorus and the rest of the song remained the same.”
Finishing Touches
Everything on ‘Vampire’ other than the grand piano was recorded at Amusement Studio. It’s also where Nigro does his post‑production, which ranges from vocal production to rough mixing. “For the vocals, with Olivia sometimes the demo take is really incredible and we just use that. Sometimes we tweak the song lyrically and melodically, and once that’s sorted out we’ll go in and record the vocals properly. We definitely worked hard on ‘Vampire’, as we were both very particular about how we wanted the vocals to build through the first verse and chorus. It involved a lot of trial and error, having her sing it and then listening back. We work together building up the vocal performance, and we then comp things together.
“During vocal recording and rough mixing I use the same plug‑ins for every singer that I work with. Other things are to taste. I always throw on a Waves Q‑series parametric EQ plug‑in. I usually cut off low end, and then I put on a UAD 1176. So I’m double compressing the vocal — I have the initial vocal going though my silverface outboard compressor, and then there’s another one in the box.
“If the song needs some grit, like with ‘Bad Idea Right?’, ‘Ballad Of A Homeschooled Girl’, ‘Get Him Back!’ or ‘Pretty Isn’t Pretty’, I’ll throw a SoundToys Decapitator on right after the EQ, before the compressor. I use the Decapitator for a little bit of saturation, because it makes the vocal cut through a little more. After the compressor I have a de‑esser and then a reverb. The reverb is always the flavour in the song. My favourite is the Valhalla VintageVerb. It has many different settings and it’s so easy to manipulate the mix and the decay. It makes it really easy and really quick to throw it on.
Valhalla’s VintageVerb is a favourite plug‑in and was used extensively on ‘Vampire’.
“The mixers I work with are Serban [Ghenea], Spike Stent, and my friend Mitch McCarthy. I send them my Pro Tools sessions, so they can start their mixes exactly from where I left off. The levels in my rough mixes are pretty close to where they’re going to be. And then someone like Serban comes in and really enhances it. You get the song back with a lot more width, the low end hits better, the drums hit harder, and so on. The levels tend to be pretty close to what I sent off, but he’s really great at improving the sonics.
“Olivia is also involved in the mix feedback, and sometimes there are lots of notes and sometimes not many. Serban did a really good job with ‘Vampire’. That song did not take much back and forth. The main things we tried to fix with Serban was getting the drums in the right position, getting them to hit well, and also how much low end to have, because Serban adds a lot of low end, a lot of the time.
“Serban is one of the few mixers who when you call him, and tell him something is too much, will say, ‘No, it’s not.’ I’ll be like, ‘There’s too much low end,’ and he’ll say ‘The low end is good!’ and I go ‘No, I don’t like it,’ and he goes ‘No, it’s good.’ The next day I may say, ‘I listened to it more and I think I’m used to it now,’ or, ‘No, I still feel the same way.’”
Gut Feelings
The hard work Nigro and Rodrigo put into Guts paid off spectacularly, not only in commercial terms but with six Grammy Award nominations for Rodrigo and three for Nigro. Other artists and producers triumphed on the night, but it demonstrates the extent to which Guts has established the singer as an enduring artist. “Olivia and I were pretty excited about the Grammy Awards, but we also knew it was tough, because there were so many great songs and albums out this year. I think just getting nominated is already pretty awesome. Olivia and I continue to work together, so we’ll see what the future brings.”
Finding A Voice
Growing up on Long Island in the ’90s, Daniel Nigro took guitar, piano and singing lessons as a teenager. He then co‑founded As Tall As Lions in 2001 with several high school friends, and Nigro as the lead singer. The band released three EPs and three albums between 2002 and 2009. During his time it gradually dawned on Nigro that the touring lifestyle was not for him. After visiting a songwriter‑producer friend, Justin Raisen, he decided to follow the same career and moved permanently to LA a year later.
“My intention was to get into the jingle game, make commercial music and potentially write some songs. I got a real sense of fulfilment out of being in the studio, and creating something that didn’t have the pressure of being the artist. I enjoyed being creatively free, and being able to put on a different hat every day. I’d get briefs like, ‘Make a thing with shiny guitars and an upbeat drum beat.’ I would never make music like that instinctually.”
Nigro worked in a restaurant for four days a week, to make money, until a jingle he wrote for McDonalds kept him afloat for a couple of years. In addition, his friend Justin Raisen introduced him to Ariel Rechtshaid, who already had a track record with Plain White T’s and Glasser, and would go on to work with Haim, Beyoncé, Madonna and many others.
“Ariel was creating the Heavy Duty publishing and production company, and Justin and I got a lot of work via him, writing songs and jingles. Justin and I would create what I call ‘seeds’, where we would write unfinished ideas, like a verse and a chorus, and we’d send them to Ariel. If he liked a seed, he would complete and produce it, and make it sound like his sonic world, and then he’d bring that to the artists that he worked with.
“I did that for the first three or four years that I lived in LA. But then Ariel became so popular as a producer that it became hard for me to get time with him. So I also worked with other producers, and found myself going into rooms to write songs, without having a creative say over how the songs were finished. It dawned on me that when I followed what I thought was working for other people, I always ended up not being happy. So I started to develop my skill set, as a producer. I realised that I’m really good as a creative partner for someone who knows what they want to say. I’m not the one to come up with the lyrical concepts of the songs, but when it comes to what the song should feel like and the melodies, I’m really good.
“I gravitated to people who have a strong identity as an artist, and once I found a couple of artists that I liked, I put a lot of energy into them. These were artists like Caroline Polachek, Freya Ridings and Conan Gray. I could see what makes these artists incredible, and I want to help them get to that next stage. That’s when I started to see myself as actually having success in music. Working with Olivia Rodrigo pushed the whole thing to a completely different level.”
Amusement Arcade
Amusement Studios is no longer a ‘home studio’, as Dan Nigro and his family have moved out!
Amusement Studios was originally a home studio. Dan Nigro and his family moved out to a different place two years ago, and the studio has since expanded to fill the entire house. Nigro is a Pro Tools user and has two Universal Audio Apollo audio interfaces. He has had his ADAM A7 monitors, which were used to make Sour, since 2011, while a pair of ProAc SM100s were his main speakers when making Guts. Because Nigro plays many instruments, the studio contains an impressive amount of equipment!
“My main mic pres are two stereo BAE 1073s. For compression I have a couple of Urei 1176s, one silverface and an original Rev A ‘blue stripe’. I got the latter about two years ago, after we made Sour. I used the silverface on Sour and Guts. I tried the ‘blue stripe’, but it doesn’t hit as hard. It’s really good for when you have an open, delicate song, but when you’re doing an intense vocal I find that the silverface works better.
“Next to my outboard I have a synth station, with an original Korg MS20, an original Moog Model D, a Roland Juno 60 and a Juno 106, a Mellotron, and an ARP Solina string ensemble. I feel that the low end on hardware synths sounds nicer, but maybe I’m imagining it. In any case, I also use many soft synths, including the Arturia stuff. Their Mellotron and Korg MS20 are great, as are their M1, Polysix, and so on. I love all the Korg stuff. I also love using Keyscape, particularly their Rhodes and the Wurlitzers. The Wurlitzer on ‘Déjå‑Vu’ came from Keyscape.
“I have a Yamaha U3 upright piano from 2010, which I used on the song ‘Logical’ on Guts. But on ‘Driver’s License’, ‘Happier’, ‘Teenage Dream’ and ‘Making The Bed’, I used my 1971 Yamaha U3. I have a bunch of great guitars, including my Dad’s guitar from he was younger, which is a Guild D25, from the early ’70s. It is at the heart of my acoustic guitar sound.
The drum kit at Amusement Studios is permanently set up and miked with a pair of Coles 4038s as overheads.
“I stereo record the guitar with one Bock Soundelux U99 below the body, and one around the 12th fret or so, and then I’ll record it again in the same way, and pan the signals half way and wide, for a super‑wide guitar sound that’s washy with a lot of spread. It’s a sound that I go for often. For instance, ‘Enough For You’ on Sour was recorded like this. But if I’m quickly writing a song, I’ll just put up one microphone. Sometimes a demo‑ish sound is cool, like ‘Favourite Crime’ has a mono guitar. And the song ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’ for the soundtrack album The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes [2023] has a single, double‑tracked U99.
“I record vocals with the U99. I also have a Telefunken ELA M 251, but on some of the female artists that I work with, including Olivia, I find it a little too bright. I prefer the Soundelux. I record all vocals three feet away from where I’m sitting, which makes it easier for me to coach whoever I’m working with.
“My two UA Apollos are linked, and the drums run through one of them. I have an old ’60s Rogers kit in a separate room, which is set up at all times, with Coles overheads, and a U99 room mic. There’s a Soundelux IFET7 on the kick, a Shure SM57 on the snare, and a [Neumann] KM184 on the hi‑hat. But to be honest, most of the drum sound in my studio comes from the Coles overheads and the room mic. I don’t ever get really great drum sounds from the close mics at my studio.
“For the most part I play the instruments at my place. Olivia plays piano and guitar great, but it just is quicker if I play and mic it up myself. It allows me to knock the parts out real fast. I usually engineer everything myself, unless we go to another studio. I’m not good enough to go to a different studio and know how to get everything going. In my own studio everything is setup and ready to sound the way I want things to sound.”