Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar filling in for Alison Stewart, who is on vacation. Just in 2024, my next guest, Emily Lazar, was in charge of putting the finishing touches on releases from Ringo Starr, Brittany Howard, Maggie Rogers, the Offspring, Willie Nelson, the Decemberists, and Vampire Weekend.

[MUSIC - Vampire Weekend: Capricorn]

Kousha Navidar: Emily Lazar is a mastering engineer who runs the studio The Lodge here in Greenwich Village. She has mastered thousands of albums from music's biggest names. This year, she was nominated for Album of the Year for her work on Jacob Collier's Djesse Volume 4. In 2021, she was responsible for three Album of the Year nominees; from Collier, HIAM, and Coldplay.

Years before, she had already set another record in that category as the first female mastering engineer to get a nomination for Foo Fighters Wasting Light. if that wasn't enough, she was also the first female mastering engineer to win the Grammy for Best Engineered Album Non-Classical. She's busy and for good reason. In addition to her work at the board, Emily Lazar is the founder of the nonprofit We Are Moving the Needle, which aims to support women in the music industry.

We've got her here with us to talk about her career. Emily Lazar, welcome to All Of It.

Emily Lazar: Hey, thanks. How are you?

Kousha Navidar: Good. Thanks so much for joining us. Really excited to talk about all of the great work you've done over the years. In a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, you mentioned that the number of albums you'd engineered was somewhere around 4,000. Do you have any sense of where that number stands now?

Emily Lazar: I don't, and I think maybe it would freak me out if I counted. It's getting crazy.

Kousha Navidar: At some point, I need to ask you, what's your favorite pair of headphones? We don't have to talk about it now, but you must have a good sense of headphones that you like, right?

Emily Lazar: I do. You know what's really interesting is I have the opportunity to have lots of headphones in my studio so that I can make sure that I can hear how everybody's hearing everything out there in the world. Everything from AirPods to $5,000--

Kousha Navidar: The fancy cans.

Emily Lazar: Fancy cans, exactly.

Kousha Navidar: Fancy cans.

Emily Lazar: Everything in between, too. It's funny.

Kousha Navidar: I am a headphone nerd. At some point, I need to talk to you about your preference. Oh, man. I could talk for days about headphones, but I want to talk about Your introduction to engineering, do you remember what got you started, what your experience was?

Emily Lazar: I do. I was a singer-songwriter before, and I was always obsessed with how records sounded and why does one song feel massive and another one just didn't. When I was writing and recording, as I went down this rabbit hole from going from one side of the glass to the other, I realized that there was a real art to this and that it wasn't by accident, and that some people actually had a repeat performance on making things that sounded great to me, and I was addicted to figuring out what that was.

Also, I think I had in my head a very distinct idea of what something should sound like, and I still do, even with other people's music, obviously. I feel the need to translate that into making it come true and crystallize for people. I was frustrated as an artist when I didn't have the tools. I did this deep dive of getting educated and learning and apprenticing and getting my master's and becoming a tonmeister and all sorts of craziness.

Kousha Navidar: It's so interesting that you bring up this idea of you have something specific in your mind about what the music should sound like. It sounds like almost a philosophy of music. Is there a way to describe that at all? What is your philosophy as compared to maybe others? Do you have a way that you could describe that?

Emily Lazar: Well, it's interesting. I started talking about this in terms with clients and friends. Actually, as an artist, it is a philosophy, but it's also a very oddly visual experience for me. While I have not been medically diagnosed with synesthesia, I definitely have synesthesia. I've been talking about it my whole life. It's been a really interesting thing because I've found that lots of other people in my space, both on the technical side, but also on the artistic side, also have synesthesia and see colors as a very big part of how they translate sound. It's visual for me in a lot of ways, too. Marrying those two together, it's--

I can give you a better example when you think about finger painting as a kid. Sometimes if you keep adding all those colors eventually you keep mushing it around and it turns brown. That also happens in music. You keep adding all these frequencies together and sounds together, and you want them to be super vivid, like a Jackson Pollock, for example, but they all of a sudden are brown mush. You can't can't distinguish one from the other.

That happens a lot for people who don't know how to handle audio and frequencies properly. They haven't created the space for those colors to shine. That's how it is for me when I'm working. I'm looking for a way to make the right colors come through, poke through at the right times, and in the right way to always emote a feeling. It's always about telling a story at the end of the day.

Kousha Navidar: Sensory. You are able to take in the sensory that most people are listening through their headphones or live and see it in a totally new way. That's such a lovely way of describing it with the finger painting of what separates somebody who can make a song sound some way versus just muddled.

Emily Lazar: I think it's like that thing. It's a visceral thing. It can give you shivers in the back of your neck or make the hair stand up on your arms. It's music and you're just hearing it. It can be both beautiful, shocking, scary, gritty. All these various feelings. All of the feelings of being a human being, really. It's amazing to me. It never gets lost on me that how cool it is that you can actually translate emotion this way, even without words. just in an instrumental can make people cry.

Kousha Navidar: You went to NYU and received a master's in '96, and then you started your studio, The Lodge, in 1997. How did that come about? How did the opportunity to start your own studio arise?

Emily Lazar: It came out of necessity. I worked at other studios. There were very few women in the industry if any, say, very few to be polite about it. But I was really like an island out there. I think I also had a very different philosophy about how to do it. Some of these bigger places that existed-- and there were very few mastering facilities because I really went on a deep dive into this specific part of making an album cross the finish line before it hits a consumer. it was called the dark art or very mysterious to people, like, what actually happens in mastering. I was really intent on figuring that out.

I wanted to build my studio to be, as I told you, I was an artist. It needed to feel like artists hung out there. It needed to feel like a place where art happened and it didn't-- For the most part, the other studios that existed that did mastering, one of which that I had worked in, felt like a dentist office to me with-

Kousha Navidar: Sterile.

Emily Lazar: -bunch of different rooms and some leather couches that you didn't really want to sit on. [chuckles] Just kind of ho-hum approach to making this really important piece of our cultural history and it didn't feel right to me. I set it up to be a very different environment. This still remains true that The Lodge has always been a place where whatever needs to happen happens.

For example, I remember Third Eye Blind was in and Stephen Jenkins was not happy yet with a song, so we threw up a U67 microphone and he sang background vocals and we flew them in to the track that was already mixed, already done because he was not ready and it was not right for him. It's really about the artist and the artist getting an opportunity to tell their story the way they want to tell it and have it impact the way they want it to impact.

Kousha Navidar: We have a clip of a track from an album you mastered in The Lodge's first year. That's according to AllMusic, at least. Julie by Magnet from their 1997 album Don't Be a Penguin. Do you remember that?

Emily Lazar: Yes. This is one of the first albums did out on my own and Mark Goodman was the producer gate who brought this to me. Actually that project I think started while I was working at the other studio and I think it came out and I was going in on weekends and nights and using any time that I could get. Moe Tucker is the drummer on that.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, really?

Emily Lazar: In the Velvet Underground. Yes, that's crazy.

Kousha Navidar: Let's hear some of it. Here's Julie--.

Emily Lazar: By the way, I don't know that I've heard this in a really long time.

Kousha Navidar: We're going to hear it together. Here we go.

Emily Lazar: It stands the test of time.

Kousha Navidar: I'm sure. We'll talk about that on the other side of it. Let's hear some music. Here's Julie by Magnet.

[MUSIC - Magnet: Julie]

Julie, I'm sorry, but I'm walking away.

Maybe you don't know yet.

Are you better off

Kousha Navidar: That was Julie by Magnet. Listeners, we're talking with Emily Lazar for our series Equalizers, Women in Music Production. She is a Grammy-winning mastering engineer and runs the studio, The Lodge here in Manhattan. Emily, how did it sound listening to that?

Emily Lazar: Truth be told, it's a little difficult to hear over the speakers, through our connection.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, fair enough.

Emily Lazar: I'm sure it was amazing.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: I was listening to that. It sounds like a lovely piece of music. Definitely stands the test of time. Can you help me understand what exactly is mastering? Where did you come in in that piece?

Emily Lazar: In that particular piece, the track was already mixed and it was brought to me for the final polish. The way you would maybe think about post-production in video is a similar thing with mastering. It's that final process where you get to manipulate equalization, compression level, any digital editing that may need to happen, and creating a signature sound for the album that makes it sound like a done fabulous piece of music that will translate on any system.

Sometimes at the mix stage, people will hear their mix back in the car on their headphones and their AirPods, whatever. Be like, it just doesn't sound done, it doesn't sound finished. It's that step between that mix to the master, which is the thing that gets sent out to everybody.

Kousha Navidar: You get it across the finish line.

Emily Lazar: Exactly. There's a lot to do at that point. My favorite days as a mastering engineer is when there's very little to do and the mixer has been incredible and it does happen. It's rare, but it happens.

Kousha Navidar: What makes a good mastering engineer? How are the skills different from a good mixing engineer, monitor engineer, producer, or something else?

Emily Lazar: I think there's one similar thing that you need for all careers in the arts, which is patience, empathy, some interest in psychology, and understanding how people work and how to help them be their best selves. The technical stuff, I think you can always learn, refine, and work on it. It's really of the interpersonal stuff that's very-- Creates those special moments and environments that helps people do their best.

Kousha Navidar: We have a text here that I think you'll enjoy from a listener. It says, "Wow, I know Emily. She mastered my album. While she works with huge names, she also supports and works with independent artists. I'm so grateful." Listener, thank you so much for sending that text. If you're willing, text us back your name so maybe we can share it with Emily, It's really wonderful, Emily. You've had such a big, obviously biggest understatement, impact on the music industry, but it spans all different kinds of artists. I'm sure that's really meaningful for you.

Emily Lazar: It is really meaningful and it really-- The impetus for starting The Lodge in the first place was that I was an indie artist myself. When I saw the treatment or lack of treatment or lack of ability to even get into some of the better studios to work with some of the bigger names, they really just didn't get the attention that they deserved. The truth is independent artists sometimes need more help than the majors because they're coming from a place with no budget and no support and they're making albums on their own.

In order to make those compete with the things that have budget, they need a little special love and attention. It's always my pleasure and takes me back to my roots on every indie artist. We will always cater to have the door open for everybody.

Kousha Navidar: I want to play some more music. You mastered the latest single from HAIM. It's called Relationships. Can you give us a little--

Emily Lazar: It's a banger. It's a banger.

Kousha Navidar: We're going to listen to a little bit of it. Anything we should listen for in this track?

Emily Lazar: Not sure which section of the song you're going to play, but the entire track is really, really well done. I think the sonics of it are outstanding. Worked with Rostam Batmanglij, who is a co-producer with Danielle Haim. There are a lot of other really great people that contributed to this, Buddy Ross and others along the way.

Kousha Navidar: We're going to listen to the beginning of it if that makes a difference.

Emily Lazar: Well, I don't even know that it needs an introduction. It's great. They're back and it's amazing and I think everyone will enjoy it. I haven't had anybody say anything negative upon hearing it. Everyone's always like, oh, this is a banger.

Kousha Navidar: Let's take a listen to it. Here's Relationships.

[MUSIC - HAIM: Relationships]

Wasting time, driving through the Eastside

Doing my thing 'cause I can't decide if we're through

Well, are we?

And if we are, what we gonna do?Relationships, oh

What's all this talk about relationships?

It feels like everyone's caught up in it

Oh, just you wait, you must be new to this

(Goes like, goes like, goes like)You got a look on your face

Like you're caught in a lie, lie, lie

Kousha Navidar: Emily, how can the average listener tell when an album has been mastered well?

Emily Lazar: That's a really good question. I guess I'm not an average listener. [laughs] I don't actually know how to answer that because my listening is obviously different. I'm not sure. Maybe you get those visceral reactions that I talked about before sonically speaking. What I love about that track is that it sounds so fresh and so current, and yet it has a very retro-round lush sonic picture. It feels really timeless. That's a really good. Maybe when somebody thinks something sounds timeless. There's all sorts of different kinds of mastering in different kinds of songs. Something that I would do. I'm so lucky. I get to work with Willie Nelson and Romy. Couldn't think of things that are more different.

The way that I approach it for different artists and different sounds and different genres is totally different. I made this record with Bastille that I absolutely love, which is a departure from some of his older, more electronic stuff. It has a very organic sound to it. The way you would approach it is just different. For me, as working on it, I'm always trying to look for what is this supposed to do at the end of the day. What is this person trying to say? It's all about storytelling, really. If somebody listens to something and they got the story and they got the sense and the sensation, then I think it was produced, performed, mixed, written, mastered well. All of those things have to come together.

Kousha Navidar: You know it when you hear it.

Emily Lazar: Look, you can master a really great. Do an amazing mastering job of a terrible song. It's still a terrible song. You can have a terrible song that's not recorded well and not mastered well and not mixed well, and you can be like, "Oh, it's a shame. Such a great song. it just doesn't sound good." It's getting them all of those pieces to fall in line.

Kousha Navidar: I want to make sure we got a chance to talk about your work when you're not producing, but helping other people in the industry. You founded the nonprofit. We Are Moving the Needle around 2021. Talk to me about the motivation for starting the organization. What were its goals?

Emily Lazar: The goals were basically to just mend the gap. The gap is tremendous. There are no women. There are women though. I don't want to say there are no women. There are women. There aren't enough and there aren't enough women that know that these careers exist. We empower people, all kinds of people. It's an organization for everyone, men too, not about just women. This is about everyone leaning into the idea of equity and radically reshaping the future of this industry, the recording industry, so that we have more really amazing stories to tell.

Music is more interesting the more angles, the more people you have involved. I think the creative process is fueled by having more and not less. That's really what it's about to just try to drive equity for all the creators in the industry. Since 2021, We Are Moving the Needle has awarded over $600,000 in scholarships to producers and engineers to attend workshops and programs around the globe. We've awarded over 140 individual scholarships to the premier audio programs such as Mix with the Masters and the Los Angeles Academy for Artists and Music Producers, pointblank Music School, and IO Music Academy.

This March we launched some amazing new scholarship opportunities for students who are pursuing four-year degrees at universities and colleges in music production and audio engineering. There's one fund that's called the Sophie Scholarship in honor of Sophie provided by her family. Then the Brandi Carlile Scholarship Fund which is powered by the Looking Out Foundation which is her non-profit. We have 15 college and university chapter partnerships so far across the country which is fantastic.

Kousha Navidar: There's so much work that you're doing. If people wanted to find out more, where could they find the organization?

Emily Lazar: wearemovingtheneedle.org. We're also on all the socials. We created a micro-grant for the wildfires in California to support everyone. People can donate just to the org or for that particular disaster.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. I'm looking at the clock. We got to stop it here. Unfortunately, there's so much more we could talk about but I've been talking to Emily Lazar for our series Equalizers, women in music production. I want to throw to another song you worked on and I'm going to say goodbye to you here. It's Alaska by Maggie Rogers. Before we go there, Emily, thank you so much for joining us.

Emily Lazar: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Here it is, Alaska by Maggie Rogers.