MENU







THE UNSUNG WOMEN OF MUSIC PRODUCTION



STORY_BY: NADIA FAYE


Songwriter and music producer Nadia Faye reflects on the representation of female music producers, while highlighting the women who are shaping the sounds of modern music under the radar.


When I first started making music, I didn’t think of myself as a producer. When I pictured the person doing this work, it was always a man. I first entered a studio at 15 and reflexively gave the producers and engineers who I collaborated with all of the credit for the sounds that I had so clearly heard in my head and spent days crafting by myself in my bedroom. I began working in studios with consoles I didn’t understand, with men in their thirties who stated their opinions and ideas as objective truths, my voice feeling small and often lost beneath their self-proclaimed certainty. The truth is, I taught myself how to produce before ever entering a studio. My ideas were not defined by how well I could mic a drum set or navigate analog equipment. My creative process was a solitary one, one with very limited resources yet unfettered by the dismissive tendencies I came to experience in the studio. I knew I needed more tools to bring forth the fullness of the sounds that I was hearing in my head and what I didn’t yet understand was that I could do that for myself.

For every woman in music I looked up to, I heard about the men who made her work possible – the geniuses behind the computer, creating the soundscapes for her to adorn. According to the 2024 Billboard Hot 100 year-end list, women currently make up only 5.9% of producing credits, and advancements and experimentation surrounding technology and music production have always been male-centered and dominated. In an industry where connections are everything, creative and accomplished female producers often fall under the radar, unrecognized and lost amid the male producer fanfare. Yet, women have always subverted this cultural norm, innovating and inspiring the sounds of popular music. It’s time that more credit is given where credit is clearly due.

Producer, engineer, and mixer Erin Tonkon, widely known for her work on David Bowie’s Grammy-winning album Blackstar, shared her wisdom about working as a woman in the industry. “We have to fight the instinct to make ourselves small. I think society wants us to make ourselves small, and every time I’ve made myself small, there’s been some man there that makes himself big.” 

Whether listeners are hearing about it or not, women always have been, and continue to be, key contributors in the world of production. Wendy Carlos and her 1968 album, Switched On Bach, became one of the leading pioneers of electronic and ambient music, introducing the mainstream to synthesized sound through classical composition. Björk continues to meticulously craft her music, pushing the boundaries of experimental production over 10 studio albums, from glitchy micro-beats to full-scale orchestrations. In more recent years, artists like Imogen Heap have made numerous meaningful contributions to the production world; her latest, the Mi.Mu gloves, is a first-of-its-kind, wearable musical technology that warp and affect sound through hand gestures. Even recent mainstream pop albums like Addison Rae’s Addison feature an exclusive female production team. 

“It takes more women and more representation and more people being aware of this bias and actively working against it to make a real change,” said Tonkon. Although the industry has often failed to highlight the undeniable impact that female producers have always had on popular music, women will continue to claim space behind the board and shape sound as we know it.