Catherine Marks had just graduated with her master’s degree in architecture, but before launching that career she wanted to take a stab at another passion: music. So the Australian took off for six months, moved to London and got a job at a recording studio.
“I started making tea there,” she says with a light laugh. Fast-forward nearly 20 years, and it’s clear Marks made the right decision. She trained and worked alongside Grammy-winning creatives Flood and Alan Moulder, and went on to work with Alanis Morissette, St. Vincent, The Killers, Wolf Alice, The Wombats, Foals and more.
This year she’s been nominated for three Grammys, thanks to her work on the record, the highly regarded debut album by boygenius (the ironically named indie supergroup consisting of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus). Marks, who produced and engineered the record, is up for record of the year for “Not Strong Enough” and best engineered album (non-classical), and could make Grammy history Feb. 4 with her nom for album of the year.
“I didn’t even know that was going to happen,” Marks says of her triple nom. “I was sort of like, ‘I’d love to go, but would I even be invited?’ I would celebrate for ‘the boys,’ ” as she refers to the band, “but little old me getting to go to the Grammys, I don’t know.”
The few female producers who have won album of the year have been artists who self-produced their own projects, including Lauryn Hill, Taylor Swift and Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne and Sarah Neufeld. Singer Autumn Rowe won the award for co-producing two tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are and Imogen Heap won for co-producing a song on Swift’s 1989 — and those were in years when the Grammys awarded all producers on an album. Now, nominees have to produce at least 20 percent of an album to be nominated or win. Marks, in contrast, produced all 12 tracks on the record alongside boygenius.
A recent USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study reported that only 3.4 percent of producers were women in 2022. No woman has ever won the Grammys’ coveted non-classical producer of the year award in the show’s 65-year-history.
When she’s asked about the lack of female producers in music, Marks has some theories. “When I started, I was the only one. So I wonder if it was a case of ‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’ ” she says. Marks notes that, culturally, the studio can be a tough place for women. “I definitely never saw it or experienced or perceived it that way, but I think it can be a pretty brutal situation.”
More than three-quarters of women in music say they have been treated differently because of their gender, according to the Women in the Mix study published by The Recording Academy, Arizona State University and the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship last year. The study also reported that women in the industry are overworked and underpaid.
Marks is excited about changing the tune at the upcoming Grammys, which is dominated by female nominees in the top three categories, among them Swift, SZA, Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Olivia Rodrigo, Lana Del Rey, Janelle Monáe, Dua Lipa and Victoria Monét. And though Marks is the only non-artist female producer up for album of the year, several female engineers are also up for the prize, including Sarah Tudzin (boygenius), Jayda Love (Monáe), Yáng Tan (Monáe) and Laura Sisk, who engineered albums by Swift, Del Rey and Batiste, and is a triple nominee in the big category.
“It’s changing a lot,” Marks says of the industry. “I think you will see that shift because the women who are starting, or have started in the last five to 10 years, their names will start coming up.”
More will follow in their wake, Marks predicts. “Other young engineers and producers will go, ‘Oh my God, I could do that, too,’ because there’s more visibility.”
Marks’ work on Manchester Orchestra’s A Black Mile to the Surface is what caught the attention of boygenius. The band originally wanted Marks to mix their self-titled 2018 EP, but she wasn’t available. They called again when they were working on their full-length debut.
“It was one of the best recording experiences I’ve ever had,” Marks says. “I was constantly in awe of them. It was a good hang and I enjoyed the roller coaster of emotions through the process of us capturing and wrestling the songs into shape.
“And, oh, by the way, they just happened to be three of the best songwriters in the world,” she says.
Marks wants to make something clear — “I would never want to just be chosen to do something because of my gender” — but she adds: “At the same time, it’s fucking awesome that there are so many more women and gender-expansive [artists] who are joining the industry and fighting for a safer space, fighting for a better working culture, a more inclusive studio culture.
“There’s so much more to do, but I want to celebrate the changes that have occurred because I now have this amazing community of producers and engineers who look like me.”
This story first appeared in the Nov. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
