Mark Ronson has built one of the most impressive musical careers in the past two decades, producing Amy Winehouse Back -to -black And publish one of the best -selling songs of all time with “Uptown Funk” for the soundtrack of one of the greatest cultural moments of the decade with Barbie. This year, the producer of Superstar marked another feather in his cap as an executive producer of SNL 50: The return concert Alongside Lorne Michaels, organizing a star concert once in life in which the main artists have covered benchmarks in the show. Ronson obtained his very first Emmy appointment in prime time in the process.
Michaels offered Ronson the concert in October 2023, which gives them a little less than a year and a half for Corral their range of dreams, which would include artists from Miley Cyrus to Lady Gaga, dear to Post Malone, the surviving members of Nirvana, and Snl Legends like Will Ferrell and Andy Samberg.
“I had this fractional flash which was like:” It will be the most wonderful thing of all time and a crazy amount of work, “explains Ronson. “And of course, I’m going to do it because it’s eye and it’s Saturday Night Live. “”
Ronson, who calls his Snl Performance in 2014 “the absolute highest point” of his career, says that he has watched all the musical acts that the series has ever organized to prepare, a task that takes many things. He reduced it to around 120 songs, writing ideas on sticky notes and publishing them, similar to SnlBabillard de Bulletin where the show announces its weekly programming.
“I would be in a hotel somewhere DJ for an F1 event or something, and the whole hotel room would just be strewn with yellow posts that would say” Karma Cameleon “or” 50 ways to leave your lover “or” bad “, says Ronson with a little laugh.
Left SNL 50: The return concert
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Ronson huddles frequently with Michaels and producer Erin David as a kind of “brain confidence” and they would review ideas for programming. Ronson would send five or six songs to the artists to cover, some of which “have completely ignored my decisions or were completely offended by them,” he jokes, adding that the artists also brought their own ideas. Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, for example, proposed the “The Boxer” of Simon & Garfunkel, a particularly remarkable song in SnlPaul Simon’s story played him in the series just after September 11, 2001.
Ronson says that the production of the concert special was intense even according to his own standards, recalling “wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats” while he was juggling into the show, working on his memories (planned for the publication later this year), and managing time with his family because his wife was pregnant with their second child.
“I remember participating in these telephone conferences like:” I know you are used to this, but I lose my head here “, jokes Ronson. “” Is this position delivered with a prescription from Xanax? “”
This story appeared in the August 6 issue of the Hollywood Reporter Magazine. Click here to subscribe.
