In fact, you could say that the producer first arose as a significant figure in the pop world as a response to a need for a ready-made, portable sound. Each of these sounds is curiously detachable from the music itself, and certainly from the artists who make it. A producer serves as a shorthand for the dominant sound of a whole era: George Martin and Eddie Kramer for the “studio as a musical instrument” experiments of the late ’60s Quincy Jones for the clinically precise grooves of ’70s and ’80s R&B Glen Ballard for the drum-machine-and-acoustic-guitar mallscapes of ’90s adult alternative Babyface for the smooth textures of that decade’s R&B Max Martin for the Eurodance sheen of 2000s teen pop. In the history of pop, the producer’s place is clearer.
He is a minor god with a Promethean ability to bring new sounds into the world. He is an oracle: the market speaks through him. He is the resourceful fifth Beatle coming to the aid of the heroes, and he is a villain, a representative of stifling, label-mandated homogeneity. He is at once a visionary creator and a bland executor of technical procedures, a name brand with star power and an anonymous functionary.
He - as an ideal type, he is nearly always a he - is both a major and a minor character. N early two centuries into the history of recorded sound, there is still no neat place for the producer in the mythology of pop music.
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