Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo, two of the biggest and most interesting pop artists of the last half-decade, have a not-so-secret weapon in common: producer/co-writer Daniel Nigro, formerly the frontman of the ’00s band As Tall As Lions. Nigro, who just scored a Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year, helped Roan and Rodrigo step off the pop assembly line and sidestep trends, building uncommonly sturdy catalogs of precisely crafted, oft rock-inflected pop.
In the new episode of our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Nigro shares studio secrets behind Roan and Rodrigo’s biggest hits and much more. To hear the whole episode, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above. Some highlights from the interview follow.
Chappell Roan’s old label, Atlantic Records, somehow thought she had to choose between the fun and emotive sides of her music. “We were starting to make fun music,” Nigro recalls. “We had ‘Pink Pony Club’ and then we had made ‘Naked in Manhattan’… And I remember they were like, ‘She can’t be both — she has to be pop music, or it has to be this sad, singer/songwriter pensive music. It can’t be both things.’ And I remember getting so mad because I know her personality and it is both! Not only can she be both, but she sounds great being both.”
Nigro isn’t sure if Roan’s next album will be out by the end of 2025. “I think it’s too early to tell,” he says. “We’re just getting started on it. I think the one thing that we took from making the last record [is that] time is a big factor in making sure that things are right. We’ve written some great songs and we already have a couple of songs that feel really great, and more songs will come over time. The thing that I love about Chappell is that she has so much confidence in what she’s doing and that always shines through in the music. There’s already so many cool moments and so many unexpected moments.”
Making “Hot to Go” required a certain amount of courage. “We couldn’t have made that song unless we were super-close,” says Nigro. “Max Martin uses the phrase, daring to suck, and you have to dare to suck sometimes. Chappell has so much confidence, and also [we have a] relationship where it’s okay to be vulnerable, and it’s okay to come into the studio with a crazy idea… It takes a certain artist with a certain confidence and a certain swagger to get on a microphone and sing it. If I got on the microphone and sang the same lyrics with the same melodies, you’d be like, ‘That’s not it!’ It’s all about her and how good she is. And that’s what makes the song so special.”
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Two songs from Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts, “All-American Bitch” and “Ballad of A Homeschooled Girl,” were recorded live in the studio with a band — an unheard-of technique in modern pop. “That was so much fun,” Nigro says. “Olivia loved the way her band sounded live and the way that the songs felt when she went on tour, and just how raw it felt. And she always was pushing me because we have these imaginary rules in our head of like, ‘Oh, that’s not how music is made today.’”
In contrast, Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” has just one live instrument — the hi-hat. “I think a lot of people are surprised that song was completely made in the box,” Nigro says. “But we felt like with that song, we needed to give it some element that actually made it feel like only a drummer could play this. We brought the hi-hat in and worked on all the hi-hat patterns to make it sound like it was a live drummer playing the song.”
Around 2020, the major labels were in a scary place, focused almost entirely on TikTok — which helps explain how an artist like Roan could get dropped by her label. “There was this really large period of time… where record labels were only looking for things that were viral,” says Nigro. “And it was one of the saddest times for me in music. Record labels weren’t focusing on any sort of artist development. The philosophy was literally just like, ‘get the song, put it out and let’s make some money.’”
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