Dan Nigro on Making Hits with Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo

Dan Nigro’s emo-inflected ’00s indie band, As Tall As Lions, always hovered on the edge of mass success, but Nigro has since decided they were missing one thing: a great producer. “I always wish that I had somebody when I was younger that just helped shift me a little bit,” he says. “Like, ‘That’s cool, but you should listen to this Neil Young song.’ ” Nigro ended up playing that very role for two of the most exciting new pop stars in years, Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo, serving as producer, co-writer, and key collaborator to both.

He recently scored six Grammy nominations, including Producer of the Year, mostly for his work on Roan’s instant-classic debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and her follow-up single “Good Luck, Babe!” “I feel like that’s part of my DNA as a producer,” he adds, “helping people not make the same mistakes I made.”

With the punky crunch of “Good 4 U,” the Queen-ly mini-operetta structure of “Vampire,” the festival-shaking sweep of “Red Wine Supernova,” and the dual guitar solos of “Pink Pony Club,” Nigro has helped reconnect the pop charts to the rock canon. But the impetus for those seemingly throwback moves almost always comes from the artists themselves. “It’s always great to have their fresh perspective: ‘That might be dated to you, but that’s not dated to me.’” (To hear a podcast version of this interview, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above.)

After moving to California in 2011, he found early success writing ad jingles and working with Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen on Sky Ferreira’s debut, but soon entered what he calls his “dark period,” spending years chasing radio trends. Once he decided to focus instead on finding young artists he loved, he connected with Roan, and they quickly recorded “Pink Pony Club” and “Naked in Manhattan” — only to discover that her label at the time, Atlantic Records, was unenthused. He blames a destructive focus at the time on virality and instant success. “Nobody was looking at it for the sake of posterity or building a catalog,” he says. When Atlantic dropped Roan, he saw it as an opportunity, starting his own imprint, Amusement Records, to put out her music.

Nigro, who’s currently working on Roan’s next album, as well as with Conan Gray, is still looking for new artists — and insisting on the importance of long-term artistic development. “When you look at careers that feel legendary over 20, 30 years,” he says, “those careers weren’t built off a couple of hit singles.”

What can people with a rock sensibility learn from the pop world, and vice versa?
The funny thing for me is that to me, they’re the same. Pop music is rock music. It’s using similar chords. A song is a song and then you dress it up with production. You could dress it up with a guitar. You could dress it up with a Juno synth. . Other producers always ask me, like, “How do you write the songs? ‘Cause we go in there, we build a track up first, the drums are banging and it feels really good. And then we write a song to the track.” Our songs are so song-focused. We write the songs first, and then when we’re done writing the song, then we produce the song.

Looking back at As Tall As Lions, it can be hard to find hints of what was to come – the songwriting is strong but you’ve said you were always trying to be more poppy than your bandmates were comfortable with.
I had not listened to our last record, You Can’t Take It With You, in many years. I started going through the songs, and I feel like we just kept on missing the mark. I know there were good intentions behind certain songs or the way we were trying to produce it, but we always got off track and it always came out wrong. I never felt like I had somebody helping me with those problem-solving issues.

Do you think bands could have chart success again or does the structure of the industry now make that impossible?
I think there is a world for bands to see some big chart success. I can’t name you a specific band at the moment, but I feel like the way things cycle, there’s going to come a time where the world is ready for it.

But because we have computers now, it’s harder for bands to form. When I was 16 or 17, the only way to make music was to get together with a drummer and a bass player. Whereas kids today can go, “Oh, I want to make a song and I want to make it sound good. I don’t need other people to do that.” People are just less inclined in general to get together to make music, cause you don’t have to, and therefore it just makes [fewer] bands happen.

Two songs on the second Olivia album were recorded live with a band, right?
“All American Bitch” and “Ballad of a Homeschool Girl” — tracks one and five. She loved the feeling of her band live and the way the songs felt when she went on tour and how raw it felt. She was really great at teaching me, because we have these imaginary rules of “that’s not how music is made today.” She was like, “I want it to feel really raw and live and the tempos to fluctuate.” I’m like, “Okay, I know exactly how to do that.”

“Good 4 U” from her debut seems like a great example of arranging a rock song with modern sensibility — few bands would pull instruments in and out the way you do.
I think people are surprised that song was completely made in the box.. Actually, there’s one instrument that was recorded live — the hi-hat. 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 a live drummer.

Chappell Roan was dropped from Atlantic Records after they heard “Pink Pony Club” — were you stunned they couldn’t hear what they had?
There was this period of time where record labels were only looking for things that were viral, and it was one of the saddest times for me in music. The amount of times I’ve been hit up by a record label — “We have this artist. They have this 15-second clip on the internet. It’s literally not a song, it’s a part of a song. Can you get together with that artist and make it a song?” It became this thing where people were finding these tidbits and trying to make it into a whole production. These artists haven’t been going through the ins and outs of understanding how record labels work, they don’t even have a full song written.

Record labels weren’t focusing on any sort of artist development. A lot of the record label philosophy was literally just like, get the song and put it out and let’s make some money.  Nobody was like looking at it for the sake of, like, posterity or how are we going to build a catalog? 

“Femininomenon” is such a perfect opening track for Chappell’s album because it encapsulates both sides of her — pensive singer/songwriter and incredibly fun pop artist —  in the course of one song.
I love that song so much for that exact reason because. When Chappell was still on her old label, there was this conversation about how she can’t be both —  she has to be pop music or sad singer-songwriter music. I remember getting mad because I know her personality and it is both. Not only can she be both, but she sounds great being both. 

After some workshopping in the studio, we came up with “Femininomenon.” Then we were like this really isn’t captivating enough for four minutes. Then somehow, I honestly forget the genesis of how it happened, but then it was just like, “What if we did a dramatic theatrical shift and we actually started the song and did a complete fake out?” I just remember, we were [both]  like, “Oh, this is the intro to your record because this is who you are.” I don’t think that oftentimes with an artist, you get to make a song that paints the whole picture, you know? So I feel very fortunate that we were able to create that song. 

“Hot to Go!” is such a big swing, and it totally connected — but it takes courage to make a song like that, because it could totally fall flat. How did it work?
We couldn’t have made that song unless we were super-close. Max Martin uses the phrase, “daring to suck,” and you have to dare to suck sometimes. Chappell has so much confidence, and because of our relationship it’s okay to be vulnerable, to come into the studio with a crazy idea and there’s no judgment.

She came in with that idea, and I remember being like “yeah, let’s do it.” We made the whole song in two hours. It takes a certain artist with confidence and 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 her, and how good she is.

What’s the status of Chappell’s next album?
Not much to report. We’re just getting started. We’ve written some great songs we feel really excited about, and more songs will come over time. Chappell has so much confidence in what she’s doing and that always shines through in the music.

Do you think it’ll come out next year?
I think it’s too early to tell.