Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen filling in for Alison Stewart. Thanks so much for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, we are grateful you're here. As we enter the final weekend of Women's History Month, today's show is celebrating women in the music industry, women who work behind the scenes as producers and engineers. First up, this hour is a woman who helped craft this hit song.

[MUSIC - Avril Lavigne: Complicated]

Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?

I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else

Gets me frustrated

Life's like this, you

you fall, and you crawl, and you break

you take what you get, and you turn it into

Honesty and promise me I'm never gonna find you faking

No, no, no

Tiffany Hansen: We're a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and in those 25 years, only three women have been nominated for the Grammy for Non-Classical Producer of the Year. The first was our next guest, Lauren Christy, a member of the songwriting and production trio the Matrix. The group's work on Avril Lavigne's album Let Go earned them several Grammy nominations, including Producer of the Year and Song of the Year. The Matrix went on to work with Shakira, Rihanna, Jason Mraz, Korn, and many other artists. Lauren Christy, just on her own, has written with Enrique Iglesias, Bebe Rexha, and more. She also started out as a recording artist and continues to release music herself for our series Equalizer, Women in Music Production. Here is Alison's conversation with Lauren Christy.

[music]

Alison Stewart: How did you discover that you had a knack for production?

Lauren Christy: I started off writing songs when I was 12 years old and I got a publishing deal when I was 18, and the first thing they did was bought me a four-track recording studio because it's expensive to go into studio. They just bought me a home studio and I set it up in my bedroom and pretty soon I moved on to an eight-track and I would just do all my own demos and that's when my production skills started.

Alison Stewart: Before the Matrix, you were a solo recording artist yourself. You earned a Golden Globe nomination for best original song, The Color of the Night from the movie of the same name. Do you mind if we play a little bit of it?

Lauren Christy: Of course. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Lauren Christy: The Color of the Night]

I need to know the way you feel

I'll give you everything I am

everything I want to be

I'll put it in your hands

If you could open up to me, oh

Can't we ever get beyond this wall

'Cause all I want is just once

To see you in the light

But you hide behind the color of the night

Alison Stewart: Lauren, it's interesting. Every interview I watched of you, there's some section where you sing a part of it, a part of your production that you've done, and your voice is great.

Lauren Christy: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: How do you find your voice as an artist helpful to you in terms of writing and producing?

Lauren Christy: Listen, I went through it as an artist. It's a difficult life it's just so competitive. Back in the day, when I was doing it, you only got a couple of shots at radio, and then literally it didn't work. Records shelved. I feel like I can be really compassionate to all the artists I get to work with because I've been behind the curtain for 25 years after I put my career on hold. I can just understand what they're going through. I feel like a big part of production is just making people feel confident and making them feel like a million bucks.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with music producer Lauren Christy, who has worked with artists like Dua Lipa, Kelly Clarkson, Ricky Martin, Jason Derulo. It's another installment of our March series, Equalizers. Women in music production. The Matrix's big break came with Avril Lavigne's album, Let's Go. Did you know when you were working on it that you had something special in your hands?

Lauren Christy: I did. it was such an amazing summer. She came out and we did two songs. She went back to New York where she'd been signed, and L.A. Reid and Josh Sarubin, who was her A&R man. They immediately heard the songs, One of them being Complicated, and said, "Go back for the whole summer." That summer of 2001, Avril came, and for three months, we just wrote all the songs. Sk8er Boi, Falling Down, all these different songs that ended up on the record. I'm With You. It was just an amazing time.

I remember roundabout when we wrote Sk8er Boi, thinking, "Wow, these songs seems special to me." I'm a Christian. I kept feeling things being given to me, [00:05:27] and I felt the same way. Just words would appear in our head, and we were like, "Wow, that means something like that. Life's like this. You fall and you crawl and you take what you get and you turn it into honesty. Promise me I'm never going to find you fake it." That was literally given to me. I didn't come up with that. It just dropped into my head. I think we did realize. My manager at the time said that I'm With You was a really nice album track and we needed to try harder, but it ended up being a number-one song, thank God.

Alison Stewart: It sounds like faith really means something to you in your music production.

Lauren Christy: It does.

Alison Stewart: Can you tell us a little more about that?

Lauren Christy: I didn't become a Christian until I was 42. I was just out there just trying to do it on my own. Then I had like a fabulous calling from God, which really changed my life. now it just makes everything so much easier because before I really thought it was my talent and I had to really prepare to be clever that day. Now I just walk into sessions with literally on a wing and a prayer.

Alison Stewart: With an open heart, it sounds like.

Lauren Christy: Literally, yes. Very much has changed my life.

Alison Stewart: I want to play Sk8er Boi for our listeners. What is something that you like about this track, something that you like about the production of this song?

Lauren Christy: I just love how it's so full on from the first moment. I love Corky James, who played all the guitars on the Avril Lavigne record. It's just amazing. My ex-husband, Graham Edwards, I just remember us sitting at my house with Avril and we just said, "Let's just do something that's really fun." Just Graham started playing that [unintelligible 00:07:10] and I said, "How about we start a song off with he was a boy, she was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious? Let's just do something really dumb." The whole song played out with Avril being a skater girl. it's really my story of me being a ballet dancer and my parents not wanting me to marry a musician because they would consider musicians to be like punks, my parents. It's that aggressiveness of the guitars and a super pop song put with that aggressiveness of the guitars.

Alison Stewart: Listen to Sk8er Boi.

[MUSIC - Avril Lavigne: Sk8er Boi]

He was a boy

She was a girl

Can I make it any more obvious?

He was a punk

She did ballet

What more can I say?

He wanted her

She'd never tell

Secretly she wanted him as well

But all of her friends

Stuck up their nose

They had a problem with his baggy clothes

He was a skater boy

She said, "See you later, boy"

He wasn't good enough for her

She had a pretty face

But her head was up in space

She needed to come back down to earth

Five years from now

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with music producer Lauren Christy. It's part of our Women's History Month March series, Equalizer, Women in Music Production. Lauren, what makes a good producer, and what makes a good songwriter? Is there overlap there?

Lauren Christy: I do think that a lot of songwriters today who are just working as songwriters actually are crossing over into being the producers because that's when it started out for me is I knew what I wanted the groove to sound like the sonic bed of the track. If you've got the groove right, you can build on that. I just think songwriters just have an overall taste of where it's got to rise. It's got to rise here. The drum fills right here.

I think songwriters are producers. I teach a master class on songwriting and production, and I really try and talk to songwriters about, please become a producer while you're young. I even do a free giveaway on to one person on my masterclass. I pull a name out of a hat and I send them a recording studio and a video of how to set it all up and start recording your own songs.

It's so important to be a producer today with the way things are with streaming and how it doesn't really pay songwriters. There's people who I just admire so much as producers, like Cirkut, Benny Blanco. They just have a vibe. Julian Bunetta, who did all the Sabrina Carpenter stuff Linda Perry. I'm sure you've spoken to her, at least.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to her next week.

Lauren Christy: She's awesome. I think having great sonic taste. Or Rick Rubin, I hear who's one of my heroes. He just has good taste. He doesn't work the board. He doesn't play an instrument. But it's worked out very well for all the artists he works with, having his good taste around them.

Alison Stewart: The Matrix. You're part of the Matrix. It was a trio, you and two men.

Lauren Christy: Yes.

Alison Stewart: When you were working with artists, did you find your gender led you to be singled out either for the good or for the bad?

Lauren Christy: I always feel, because I was with two guys in a team, I never felt that thing of being put down as a woman. I'm very much involved in all the vocals and comping and tuning the vocals. That meant I had to sit with Jonathan from Korn, just me and him doing his vocals. I never got anything but respect. I've never found it to be that anyone would diminish me for being a woman. I think that is probably because I had two great guys around me as a team so it's been a good experience for me.

Alison Stewart: You're releasing an album later this year called Their Hits My Way, featuring your take on songs that you wrote and you produced. What have you discovered revisiting these songs?

Lauren Christy: First of all, I want people to know that I'm not trying to be a pop star at my age. I just really felt that I wanted to do something for my future grandkids so they can see that if you're a creator, you should keep doing it. Just because I made my last record in, what was it, 1997, I'm like, "Look, I'm this age, and I'm releasing a new album in 2025." I wanted to just do reimagined versions of the song so you could hear them pared down and say, a good song can be done in many different ways.

I love to sing. To this day, if someone says to me, "Would you like to get up and sing?" I'm always like, yes. I very rarely say no to anything because my first love was singing. That's what made me become a producer, because how do I get this done?

Tiffany Hansen: That was Allison's conversation with Lauren Christy, formerly of the songwriting and production team the Matrix. Up next, more from our series Equalizers, women in music production. Stay with us.