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The Double Glazed Glass Ceiling

PRODUCER OF THE YEAR, NON-CLASSICAL

The Producer of the Year, Non-Classical category was established by the Recording Academy in 1974 to honor those who “present consistently outstanding creativity in the area of record production.” Non-Classical is the Academy’s designation for popular music.

267 individual Grammy nominations have been made since the category’s inception. Several producers have been selected more than once. 7 of these 267 nominations were presented to women. That means less than 3% of those considered for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical has been female.

To date, none have taken home the trophy.

Let’s take a look at the handful of women who’ve blazed the trail thus far.

Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation 1814 (1990)

Miss Jackson was the first woman to receive a nomination in the category, with longtime collaborators Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam.

Expanding on the narrative of power established by her 1986 commercial breakthrough, Control, Janet bucked expectations even further and released a slick, socially-conscious concept album in the unlikely vein of Marin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?”

Rhythm Nation 1814 was nominated for 9 Grammys and spawned seven Billboard Top 5 singles, breaking the record previously set by her famous older brother. Five of those singles made it to #1. The groundbreaking 30-minute “telemusical” released as a video companion to the record earned Janet a Grammy for Best Music Video – Long Form.

Mariah Carey – Emotions (1991)

Co-produced with Walter Afanasieff, Emotions marks the second occasion upon which a woman was up for the award, in 1991.

Upon signing with Columbia Records, 19-year-old Mariah—who co-produced the demos that got her picked up by Tommy Motolla—was obliged to take a backseat to established producers for her chart-topping debut, Mariah Carey. Hers is a classic case study in the perils of being a young woman in the record business; though she’s accomplished plenty in her own right, one wonders what she might have achieved if she’d been granted better access and support early on in her career instead of finding herself trapped in what she refers to as “the golden cage.”

After her first album’s success, Mariah sought to take more of a producer’s role on Emotions. She is credited as a vocal arranger, producer, and mixer.

Paula Cole – This Fire (1998)

Though she’s technically the third nominee, Paula Cole was the first woman to be nominated as a sole producer, in 1998.

Cole was a frontrunner on the wave of 1990s women fighting for a stronger foothold in the music business. A self-proclaimed “dark horse,” the Berklee College of music alumna received backlash for her appearance at the award ceremony for sporting unapologetically hairy armpits and flipping the bird during her performance of “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?”

This Fire was nominated for seven awards, including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year. She took home the award for “Best New Artist.”

Sheryl Crow – The Globe Sessions (1999)

The fourth nominee had already made an indelible mark as a singer, songwriter, and musician when she received the Producer nod in 1999.

Sheryl Crow caught her big break on backup vocals with Michael Jackson in 1987. Her first album, produced by Hugh Padgham, was scrapped for being “too slick.” However, those songs found homes with some major artists: Tina Turner, Celine Dion, and Wynonna Judd. She established her rootsy-yet-pop-sensible sound with the official 1994 debut, Tuesday Night Music Club.

On The Globe Sessions, the storied songstress took the driver’s seat; producing all tracks except for a cover of Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (produced by Rick Rubin).

Crow was the first nominated female producer to have a woman on the album’s audio engineering team—Trina Shoemaker, who took home the first female win that year for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1999)

1999 was a landmark year for women at the Grammys, and Miseducation was the career-defining album of fifth nominee, Lauryn Hill. She was recognized alongside Sheryl Crow, marking the first time two women were simultaneously up for the award.

Stepping into the spotlight as one-third of hip-hop legends Fugees, the outspoken young singer-rapper captivated listeners with an updated rendition of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.” The group disbanded in 1997 amid interpersonal issues and power struggles. Hill was determined to distance herself from her male contemporaries and establish her own creative space.

Though her legacy has suffered quite a bit of controversy, Ms. Hill’s contributions to hip-hop are lasting. She was the first female artist to be nominated for ten Grammys in a single year. She hit yet another first when she took home five trophies that night—unfortunately, none of them were for Producer of the Year.

Lauren Christy – (2004)

Lauren Christy, another singer-songwriter who found her true calling off the beaten path, was nominated in 2004 for her work with writing and production team The Matrix, which included records made with Hillary Duff and Liz Phair.

Before establishing herself as a behind-the-scenes hitmaker, Christy was an award-winning solo artist. Her contributions to Avril Lavigne’s breakthrough debut, Let Go, earned her seven Grammy nominations and cemented her place in pop history.

A prolific songwriter, she’s most recently cut records with Bebe Rexha, Dua Lipa, and The Struts. Additional credits include David Bowie, Jason Mraz, Rihanna, Britney Spears, Shakira, Chris Brown, and Korn.

Linda Perry – (2019)

Like the other women on this list, Linda Perry got started on her path to Producer of the Year as an artist. She scored an international hit with the song “What’s Up?” by her band 4 Non Blondes in 1992 and has since parlayed that success into a highly regarded songwriting and production career, making records with some of music’s top artists.

The seventh nominee, Perry stands out as the first to really step into the role of Producer. She runs a professional recording studio and is credited as an engineer on multiple projects. She founded two labels, a publishing company, and an artist development organization (We Are Hear). Her catalog—featuring such artists as Pink, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Joan Jett, and Dolly Parton—imparts a pointed engagement with and championship of women.

After 14 years of no representation in the category, the 53-year-old super producer stands a chance to finally shatter the glass ceiling for an increasingly upsurgent tide of female music producers.

Will the Recording Academy “step up” and award a woman with the Grammy for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical?

We’ll have to wait and see.

* For purposes of this article, we’re focusing on the primary branch of the Grammys, established by National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences in 1957. Linda Briceño was the first female producer to take home a Latin Grammy, in 2018.

Ainjel Emme is a musician, songwriter, and producer. She has spent the past 20 years immersed in the study and practice of record production, shadowing world-class audio engineers, working in professional studios, and making records via her Los Angeles-based production house, Block of Joy.

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My Love of the Guitar (Pt. 2)

Read Part One Here

I went to an early college (Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts), and while I was finishing up my BA thesis, I was also in my second year of private classical guitar lessons. I’d been playing for almost nine years already and was also playing the viola, and in two choirs, and music theory classes. I had a laptop, but this was before everything was done digitally, so I used my hands to write and edit and analyze notation in addition to taking notes, and editing drafts of my thesis. I write with my left hand, and I play “standard” guitar (which is to say that my left hand presses the frets and my right hand plucks the strings). My guitar teacher instructed me to practice a minimum of two hours a day, “but really six hours is more reasonable if you can manage that,” she’d suggested.  Because I adored her, even with a full course load and two babysitting jobs, I practiced as much as I could. This usually amounted to three hours a day.

“If I could play in the morning or late at night, I could practice even more,” I told her. “But I don’t want to bother my roommates.”

“Ah yes, I remember those days!” She reminisced. “When I was in college, I would wake up at 4 am and put socks on my hands. That way, when I played, it was very quiet!” She said this with a twinkle in her eye. I looked at her gesturing hands and arms and realized they were perfectly oriented to hold a guitar. Even without one in her arms, she was ready to play the guitar. I wanted to be more like her. But socks on my hands? At 4 am?

All I could muster up was: “I’ll give that a try.”

playing my G&L telecaster on a rooftop in Brooklyn, 2013. Photo by Lisa Myers.

I woke up earlier and drove to the soundproof practice rooms on campus. I’d set up my foot pedal, cut and file my fingernails, warm up, and set up the various pieces I was attempting to memorize. After three hours I’d head over to the library and sit in my cubicle I was allotted as a senior to read my books and take notes. For the first time, I was writing a long-form academic essay on anything of my choice. It was as exciting as it was terrifying. When the sun set, I’d pack up and drive to the next town over to babysit, where I would read, take notes, and write on the couch while a baby slept upstairs. (To this day I’ve never met this particular child. Once she woke up and I entered her room, picked her up, sang to her until she fell back asleep, and then put her back down and left the room again. But it was completely dark the whole time, so I feel this doesn’t really count as having properly met.)

After half a semester of this routine, my left arm began to hurt. I tried to give it a rest, but I was doing something with it almost every waking moment. I couldn’t help it. I hoped my guitar teacher would have a solution. I’d come to see her as a sort of wise woman; an auntie of musical persuasions.

“My left arm and hand really hurt,”  I said during my next lesson. Truthfully the dull hurt had started to become a throbbing pain that was now going up to my left shoulder. “I think I’m just using this side a lot. You’re left-handed too, yeah? What do you suggest I do during this time while I’m in school and need to use my left hand to write a lot?”

She didn’t skip a beat. “Learn to write with your right hand!”

She said it with a hint of condescension like I was stupid for not having thought of it myself.

“Oh. Okay, I will have to… give that a try,” I said, disheartened. She couldn’t be serious, could she? It’s not like I chose to write with my left hand. How could it be as simple as choosing to write with my right hand?

I really did try it, but it was useless. I couldn’t write a word with my right hand, let alone notes and sentences and paragraphs.

I had to keep going the way I had been.

my first electronic (read: no guitar or live instruments) performance, somewhere in Vermont, 2010. Photo by Jane Sweatt.

After I graduated, I expected the pain to subside on its own within a few weeks, but it got worse. For the next year it was so bad there were nights I had trouble sleeping. I talked to many musicians about it. Finally, a violinist who had toured and recorded for over 40 years suggested that I had nerve damage. “You have done the same couple actions so many times, and overused certain parts of your arm in the process. The only way to experience relief is to completely stop doing those actions.”

I looked down at my right hand. I had kept my fingernails long and curved for plucking for many years. My left-hand nails were always short for pressing strings onto the neck board. I was used to typing like this, used to the difference in sensation when I would use both my hands. I loved sitting down to practice and learn new pieces, even if I wasn’t planning on being a concert player.

Could I let this go? How long would I need to stop for? Would I be okay without it? Would my college guitar teacher somehow find out and call me and berate me for not following her learn-to-write-with-your-right-hand advice? How much shame could I endure?

my first time troubleshooting Ableton Live during a soundcheck, Brooklyn, 2012. Photo by Clyde Rastetter.

Eventually, the pain became so bad I had to stop playing for years. Sometimes I would forget the pain and would pick up a guitar for a little while and regret it later. I was so sad to not play as much as I wanted. But unbeknownst to me, my guitar time was being replaced by audio time. I was buying books, downloading programs, going to classes, and spending hours upon hours learning the ins and outs of digital audio technology. I was starting to create sounds I had never heard before, using them to create soundscapes I’d never interacted with before, and writing lyrics and melodies I’d never think up before.

Unknowingly, a  new world was opening up to me.

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