Producer/songwriter Andrew Watt‘s started off his wild year with Lady Gaga‘s smash Mayhem, co-producing and co-writing with Gaga, Cirkut, and others, and earning an executive producer credit alongside Gaga and Michael Polansky. A month later came Brandi Carlile and Elton John’s first album together, Who Believes in Angels?, produced and co-written by Watt. Since then, he’s worked on Katseye‘s single “Gabriela,” played at his friend Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert, and co-produced Carlile’s new solo album, Returning to Myself (due Oct. 24) — and those are just the projects he can talk about.
Earlier this month, three different songs Watt worked on dropped in the same week — Lady Gaga’s Wednesday track “The Dead Dance” (co-produced and co-written with Gaga and Cirkut), Ed Sheeran’s “Camera,” and Carlile’s single “Returning to Myself.” (For even more from Watt, check out his episode of our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play below.)
Are you busier than you’ve ever been right now?
It’s been pretty much the same for a few years. Every day feels like Game Seven of the World Series. Wake up, “What are we doing today? Oh fuck. It’s time to bring it.” It’s not, “Oh, today’s just gonna be a relaxing day.” Every day there’s something really important to me that I’m working on. What more could you ask for out of life, right?
Gaga’s “The Dead Dance” for Wednesday is such a fun surprise, with a great disco-influenced feel.
She is unbelievable. Every one of these songs that we ever made together, the concepts are so effortlessly her. Lady Gaga, “The Dead Dance.” It’s just such a her concept. Because of the title and the way that she was singing, the production morphed and shifted a lot. We worked very hard on that production to make it sound original and also feel like something that you could really dance to.
What I really love about that song is the live instrumentation mixed with the track instrumentation. There’s some really good bass in there and cool guitar inversions and stuff and great synths and the way everything works together. I remember when we were making that bridge, that’s where it got really funky. “Do the dead dance” — that was invented from the bridge music. That was a big telltale for the song. And then everything got morphed around that.
One really different thing you did recently was the Katseye song “Gabriela.” How did that come about?
Yeah. I’ve had some great success working with the guys, [Hybe founder] Bang [Si-Hyuk] and Jung Kook and those songs that we did [in 2023]. When he brought Katseye to me and was like, “This is my new thing,” we just worked to find the right song. To make a big song, especially in pop music, it takes an army, like literally an army, everything from the group to the managers to the label. Everything has to be firing on all cylinders. It went through Interscope — I absolutely love that team there, and John Janick, and they’re amazing at what they do.
Katseye are like the new Spice Girls.I really enjoyed working with the different vocalists. Finding which singer should sing what and when it should come in — the puzzle of that was fun. It was like when I was young, I loved puzzles.
Katseye seem like potential superstars in the making.
I mean, they’re not in the making, they’re superstars! Absolutely. I’d love to do more with them. I think they’re just great.
You did a lot of work with Aaron Dessner on Brandi Carlile’s new album; how did that cross-collaboration work?
Brandi was in an unbelievable period where she did this amazing collaboration with Joni [Mitchell]. Getting Joni onstage again and taking that on her back? Brandi is one of the strongest-willed people that I’ve ever met in my life. She did that and then went straight from that into this Elton collaboration. After that, she was just feeling like, “What am I gonna do next? It’s time to turn inward.” So she was searching, working in a way that she hasn’t worked before. David Bowie always said, “Swim into the deep end where your feet can’t touch the ground, and then that’s when you’ll really start making something.” I made a really great friend out of Aaron, which is so cool. We love each other and we had so much fun. He worked on some of the things that I had started with Brandi and I worked on some of the things that he started with Brandi and it just became this kind of really open, great thing.
Where did your sensibilities meet and where, if at all, do they diverge?
Aaron is a master in subtlety, where you’re listening, and it’s very song-focused, and some beautiful sound — maybe some muted thing — goes by, and you can’t even tell what it really is. It just lifts your emotion. My music is not always very subtle. It’s kind of putting those two things together and getting them to work — maybe a song starting really subtle and then maybe building to something larger at the end. We were like checks and balances for each other. But we’re also, at our core, both guitar players. So we just had so much fun playing guitar together. We would plug in together at the same time and play live. And the Brandi Carlile band is a live band. So it was important for the songs to still be recorded like a live band.
The title track is a beautiful, low-key song.
Yeah. We were messing around a lot with open tunings. Brandi Carlile played the album Blue live at Carnegie. The confidence you have to do that! She really got inside those songs. She understands the chords and how they change and how they move. So once that happens, you get a new bag of tricks. Her guitar player, Tim [Hanseroth], had his guitar in this really cool Joni tuning and she just picked up the guitar and that’s when “Returning to Myself” came out. That was the last song that got written. And it felt, as often, your last song that you make should be the first song. The song’s called “Returning to Myself.” So what do you hear? You hear her alone. And as the song grows, you start to hear these textures that maybe you haven’t heard on a Brandi song before, and they’re more esoteric and dreamlike. We talked a lot about Wrecking Ball, which Daniel Lanois produced for Emmylou Harris. You let Emmylou be exactly what Emmylou is, but all the sounds around her and the production is something that she hadn’t done before. It became a guiding light for us.
You also have a new song, “Camera,” with Ed Sheeran.
The day we wrote “Camera,” we wrote three songs. Three full, finished songs. That was just one of them. One of them came out already, it was called “2step” [released in 2021].
Oh, so these sessions were a while ago. People have talked to me about the extraordinary speed that Ed writes songs.
The only way I can describe Ed is like Michael Jordan. It’s athletic, the way in which he writes songs and the way he’s working himself and the level in which he comes in. And it’s that Game Seven thing that I was talking to you about before. It’s like he steps in and he’s there to do it and he moves so quickly and you just gotta be there to follow it and be there for him. You’ve never seen anyone record harmonies the way he does. It’s amazing. They’re pitch-perfect, one after another.
Keith Richards’ son, Marlon Richards, let slip that the Rolling Stones are recording an album in London. And you happened to mention you were just recording something in London — and you worked with the Stones on their last album. So is there anything you might want to say about that?
[Watt smiles and holds up the Rolling Stones soccer jersey he’s wearing.] I’ve said it before, it’s like working for Batman. I’m Commissioner Gordon. Or it’s opposite, actually. When the bat sign goes up in the air, when the tongue is up in the air, you just go. When it’s time you go. I can say we did some recording together, but that’s all I can say.
So what holds all this different work together in your mind as far as your approach?
The reason why I can work a lot and stay inspired is ’cause I get to work with all these different artists in all these different genres. If I was just making rock music, I feel like maybe the sound would get tired at a certain point, right? But if I got to make Hackney Diamonds and then go make an album with Lady Gaga and be making dance music, I’m learning different things. I’m listening to different stuff. It’s a different part of my brain and requires a different skillset for me. But at the end of the day, it’s still listening to an artist and figuring out how to get what they want to say out into the world, into a record. Working across all different genres keeps everything exciting, and makes it refreshing when you get to go listen to a band play. And it makes it refreshing when you’re like, “Oh, we’re not recording a band now. I’m working with one person and I have one boss.” It’s all exciting.
The last time we spoke, you said you were looking for a young rock band that could conquer the world. And the hunger for something like that seems to be out there — look at those Oasis shows.
I was there on Sunday!
So is your head still there?
Absolutely. All the time. Any young band that anyone can show me, I’m the happiest person in the world. And what was so cool about Oasis is, like, they are the zeitgeist. Just seeing L.A. come together like that, and young kids are there going crazy. Those songs, those guitar tones. The amps are up to 10. They just stand there and play and everyone goes crazy. How cool is that?
Is there anything else upcoming that you can hint at?
I’m very busy!
