Paul McCartney, Madonna and Lady Gaga Officially Found Their Secret Weapon

Дата публикации: 18-08-2026 17:54:43

Explore Andrew Watt's insights on producing for McCartney, The Rolling Stones, and Madonna in this exclusive interview.

Основное содержимое страницы с новостью.

Image via Adali Schell

Published Aug 18, 2026, 1:54 PM EDT

Val Barone is a journalist working remotely and specializing in music features. A passionate music lover, she keeps up to date on the latest developments in the entertainment world, and in the past five years, she's written for several sites, including ScreenRant, MovieWeb, TheThings, and Far Out Magazine. She covers breaking news in the music world and loves sharing stories about the classic rock musicians she grew up listening to. As a Gen Z writer, she offers a fresh perspective on the events that change music history.

For several years now, Andrew Watt has been the darling of the production world. Practically every high-profile music project across genres has Watt's name on it, and at just 35 years old, he has earned the trust of the biggest names in the entertainment industry through his relentless drive and an enthusiasm that Beatle Paul McCartney has called "contagious."

This year has been especially busy for him, and that's just how he likes it. May 2026 saw the release of Paul McCartney's latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, which he produced and helped write over the course of four years. In July, his second collaboration with The Rolling Stones, the album Foreign Tongues, came out, and so did Madonna's latest album, which he not only produced and also helped write.

I was lucky enough to chat with him during a quiet moment of his busy schedule, to talk about these incredible projects, as well as his many accolades, including his Emmy nomination for his work with Lady Gaga on the song "The Dead Dance," which featured in Tim Burton's Wednesday.

COLLIDER: So to start off, I wanted to congratulate you on the Emmy nomination for "The Dead Dance" for your work with Lady Gaga. Can you tell me a little bit about putting that song together and creating it especially for Wednesday? It's such a different world from classic rock production. What was it like moving between those two spaces?

WATT: I mean, I was born in 1990, so I grew up... at 10, 11 years old with a computer in front of me and listened to all different types of music. So my influences come from everywhere. And I actually met Gaga when I was making the Stones album, and we just had so much in common, so much music in common. And so we had a lot of fun making her entire album Mayhem together. The thing about working with Gaga is she is such an amazing leader. So she comes up with these concepts and these songs and these melodies and these worlds and these ideals with such an incredible imagination. And so when it came time to do that song, we were really just following her lead and trying to support her, making the best music to go around with the concept of doing the dead dance, you know?

COLLIDER: And how did the show influence the song? Did you write it and then thought that it would be great for the show or did you write it specifically for Wednesday?

WATT: Yeah, you know, it's something where it felt like, you know, well, if you saw the first season of the show when Jenna Ortega was doing the "Goo Goo Muck" [by The] Cramps dance, it was put by a lot of fans to Bloody Mary and that became such a viral moment. So the idea for them to be together was something that was discussed, you know, Gaga and Wednesday and Tim Burton. Gaga's obviously a huge fan of Tim Burton's work. Who isn't? We all grew up on his movies. So it was a really, it was an organic thing for there to be a collaboration between the two worlds because it was something that was just made by fans and really organically took off.

And that's one of the coolest things about the internet today is like, fans can show you what they like and what they want, and you can watch them in real time without something being shoved down their throats. Like it used to be, you got your music from the radio. Now, fans are creating their own, you know, their own ways of using the songs, whether it's on TikTok or other media forms, they're creating their own content with the music that they love. And then other fans like that as well. And then they're the ones spreading it.

So it's kind of for the fans by the fans. And that was exciting knowing that it came from a real place from our fan base. And then we were gonna be able to do something that echoed that and amplified that. And then again, you know, Gaga and Tim Burton had the amazing idea for the video and how it would come across in the show. And obviously she was a really cool character in the show. So it's really fun to do stuff like that, you know, especially within like an entire album process, to have those little moments that are different and for four different things, it really made the creative process interesting and always feeling like there was, you know, different roads we were gonna go down.

COLLIDER: That's such a great way to look at today's industry because the usual discourse is that nowadays everything comes manufactured and, you know, pre-packaged for a specific audience. And you're right, there's a lot of organic, everything that comes from TikTok trends or whatever, it looks manufactured, but it's really organic.

WATT: Yeah, and some of it is manufactured, but anything, because it's the same thing. That's capitalism, right? That's people trying to be like, oh, when something organically goes off here, then if we do that, and we fake that, then we'll have a hit. Like, you could tell the stuff that is real and organic versus something that is made by, you know, a company or a record company, or again, like trying to imitate that, you know? I think, you know, those real moments that are really loved by people are, those are the biggest things and the biggest moments, and you can't fake that, so.

COLLIDER: And how do you feel about the nomination?

WATT: I mean, it's amazing. It's incredible. That whole process of doing work and creating together and laughing and hanging out and having fun. We did it for ourselves. We did it because we love music, and we were so into the art we were creating and seeing it recognized and, you know, wanting to be celebrated by our peers and, you know, especially the Emmys.

We had a really great time at the Grammys this year and got to perform at the Grammys as well. That was amazing. It's incredible.

It's not why you do the work, but when it happens, it's incredible. And it's another chance to celebrate the art that we love.

COLLIDER: Seeing that you've been sort of jumping through different genres and different generations of artists, do you feel like there's a common thread in how you approach your collaborations or is it case by case?

WATT: It's case by case. And what's cool about it is that it's never the same. It's actually, the common thread is that it's never the same.

That's what keeps it fun. That's what keeps me working and going from album to album. It's like when you make an album with Lady Gaga, you're gonna have a completely different process than when you're working with a band like the Rolling Stones or when you work with an artist like Elton John, it's a solo artist and it's different.

And maybe there's parts of it that are nostalgic, but he also pushes you into a new direction. And it can be, there's elements of jazz and blues and all kinds of stuff. There's every artist you're working with, it's different.

And Lady Gaga can start a song in many different ways. And at some point in her process, every time she brings the song back to the piano, every song we've ever written together, at some point, whether it was a song like Dead Dance that was extremely tricky and electronic and live elements and guitars and synth bass and all that stuff, it was eventually brought back to the piano where we sat with the piano and guitar and went through it. So it felt good like a song just being played on two instruments.

So I've been so lucky to work with so many different types of artists in my career. And it's what keeps me coming back that it can all be different.

Andrew Watt Talks About Working With His Heroes "I am so lucky to work with people that I have idolized, people that made me the musician I am today."

Courtesy of Andrew Watt

COLLIDER: When you're working with someone that you grew up listening to, especially someone like the Stones or McCartney who has like 60 years worth of instincts and have met every producer in the world, how do you turn off the fan mode and turn in the producer mode, let's say?

WATT: That's a great question. You know, sometimes you wake up, and you say to yourself, holy s**t, I'm going to work with a Beatle today. That happens. I mean, it happens every day, it's not sometimes, it's every day. And you gotta move slow, move slow through your reactions. And you know, you gotta have sometimes, I think, conversations with yourself are a very healthy thing to do. You know, sometimes you gotta sit yourself down, have a little talk. And I try to remind myself always that I am so lucky to work with people that I have idolized, people that made me the musician I am today. And I'm there to make great music and I get to enjoy learning from my heroes, but they have me there to produce them.

That's why I'm there. That's why they want me there. And Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Lady Gaga, all of them are producers. They're all producers themselves. They have me there because they want to be produced. So, or, you know, I just try and tell myself every time, give your opinions because your opinions mean something to them. And if you do it in a way that's soft natured and isn't a definitive statement, and it's openness, and you have openness to move around, and it's just purely about, you know, creative taste, you can bounce back and forth and really get somewhere great. Otherwise, you're just a yes man. And that's not why I do what I do.

COLLIDER: Yeah, and if they wanted that, they would just do it themselves. They wouldn't call someone else.

WATT: Yeah.

COLLIDER: Tell me a little bit about meeting Paul McCartney for the first time. I know that the initial meeting wasn't like a work meeting. It was just supposed to be about you two meeting each other and yet you came out of it with the first, with the opening track for Boys of Dungeon Lane. What was that meeting like, and how did it turn into a songwriting session?

WATT: Paul was coming over for tea. His manager, Scott Roger, kind of set us up to have tea together. And the night before, I was up all night thinking, holy s**t, a Beatle's coming to my house. At that point, I was living in the house where I had my studio. And the night before, I woke up kind of in a cold sweat because I realized I'm a lefty, but I play guitar righty. Paul's a lefty and I had no lefty instruments. So I rented all of the gear I knew he used. All of the different instruments. The Hofner bass, the Rickenbacker bass in case he wanted that, Martins and Epiphones and Gibsons... And I had a bunch of different instruments there that he could play in case he wanted to play. We weren't supposed to play. We were just supposed to have tea. But if, by any chance, he asked for a guitar or wanted to have a play and I didn't have the instrument there, I would kill myself for the rest of my life. I missed that chance. And I just always, it goes kind of back to how I always am.

I think a lot about what the first time I'm gonna be with someone is like. And even if I know them already, but when we're starting or whatever it is, the stuff that I have around, I always make sure that I have everything that I could think of that they could possibly think of around so that wherever they turn, I'm kind of ready. So yeah, I had those guitars, and we hung out for a while, and we talked about music, and we talked about life, and we talked about his history and doing stuff and the music that I made and everything.

And then we talked about, we started talking about songwriting. And he said, you know, sometimes I'll just play. He was kind of giving me advice. Like you get stuck. He's like, "Sometimes if I'm stuck, I'll play the craziest chord where your hands don't even, like I don't even know what I'm doing. I just like, I put my hands in a shape and I just strum somewhere on the guitar and move it around until, like, it's just like, I just hear something weird."

And he's like, "You know, I'll just play a random chord." And then he went to go reach for a guitar behind him to show me what he meant by that. And he was like, "Oh, they're all right." And he couldn't play. And then I said, "I have a lefty guitar actually, if you want." He said, "okay, great." So I handed him the lefty guitar. He played this chord randomly that he didn't even have a plan. He just put his hands in shape just to show me what he meant. And the chord hung out there for a second in this way that kind of... it felt ugly but cool. And then he moved one of his fingers two frets down.

Suddenly it was resolving itself and the weirdness got beautiful. And then we went to a third chord, and then I picked up a guitar and then we started playing. And then we just, it was just this natural thing. We didn't say, "okay, let's do this." It just kind of happened. And so we started this idea that felt cool. And then I kind of bounced it down for him and I sent it to him. And then he was like, texting me. He's like, "oh, I'll come back tomorrow. Let's finish that." So it was just really organic. We actually did not... we've been friends now. I think that was in 2021, it's 2026.

So we've been friends and in each other's lives consistently since that moment for five years. We did not say the words, "let's make an album" for four years. We just, every year, two times a year, we'd grab two weeks or three weeks and make some music. So it became this really kind of organic thing. Just make a collection of songs and let's keep, let's do it and see what happens. And it was never, "I'm your producer, and I'm going to produce this album." I've never had that with anyone else. We just kind of said every, we enjoyed making music together. So every year, a couple of weeks a year in two different places, we'll make some music.

And then once we felt like we made enough stuff together that felt like it belonged together. And then he had some other songs that he showed me that kind of helped him with finishing the production of, then it started to feel like, okay, maybe there's a collection of songs here that are an album. So it just was a really, really organic thing. We never pushed each other, and we just did it because we wanted to. So I'm so proud of it, and it means so, so much to me.

COLLIDER: This is sort of random, but I'm now remembering watching an Instagram Live of him with Phoebe Bridgers, when the Imagined album came out, and he was talking about working with you. Since you told the story, I just remembered that. So yeah, it's been a long time coming.

WATT: Right! That interview was, like, within two weeks of our first ever working together.

COLLIDER: And was it that you didn't dare to bring up the subject of producing the album, or was it that it just didn't occur to you?

WATT: It just didn't matter. It's like, Paul McCartney, Beatle rule. He wants you to do anything, you're f***ing doing it. You're just like, I wanna do it. Anything he asks me to do, forever, I'm doing. I just love him. I wouldn't be a musician without him. I love spending time with him. I love his friendship. I love having a margarita with him. I love being in the studio with him. I love it all.

We're real life friends. We hang out. And it's one of the most special relationships in my life. And every time I'm with him, I learn something else about music. How to produce, how to hit the drums, how to use something... about life. He's like my teacher. So it's just, it's an incredible relationship that means more to me than I can properly describe right now over the phone to you.

Andrew Watt On the Artist / Producer Relationship "You gotta let your fear go away and know that the things that you're suggesting are for the better of the song that you're creating."

Photo credit: Rankin

COLLIDER: You were working with [Paul McCartney] and with the Stones at the same time, Foreign Tongues and The Boys of Dungeon Lane were done at the same time, right?

WATT: Yeah, yeah.

COLLIDER: How did that work, logistically and just personally, how did you compartmentalize?

WATT: Well, they're very different artists. So it goes back to that same thing that we talked about. No two artists are the same. They have very different processes. Like we said before, the Stones are a band. Paul McCartney is a solo artist. He also plays all the instruments himself. So there's this layering process to what he's doing. So it's just about making the time and making sure your diary's organized and keeping your word and then it all works.

COLLIDER: So we have you to thank for having Paul McCartney featured in a Rolling Stones album, then?

WATT: Yeah, that was cool.

COLLIDER: That was you?

WATT: That's a day in the studio you will never, ever forget. Yeah, you know, when we were making the first Stones album, I say the first Stones album, I think it's the 24th album, but when we were making the one, Hackney Diamonds, the first one, their longtime bass player, Darryl Jones, was on tour. So we didn't have a bass player. So when we would track the songs, Ronnie [Wood] would play bass sometimes, Keith [Richards] would play bass, I would play bass. We just didn't have a bass player. So sometimes no one would play bass and then the bass would get put on after.

So when you're thinking about like, "okay, let's fill out the room," or, "what would be a cool thing to do?" We didn't have a bass player. So you think, who could come and play bass on this? Who's the greatest bass player of all time? Paul McCartney. And then you remember, they have this long history together. The Stones and Paul were those... the Beatles and the Stones were both formed within, like, years of each other. I mean, the Beatles were just a little before the Stones. They saw England the same way at the same time, saw America the same way at the same time. They've been in each other's lives for, at that point, over 60 years together. So for Paul to come in, put on his bass and play, although they're completely different bands, that was the closest he could get to playing, besides playing with Ringo, to playing in a band that has been around his entire professional career with him, you know?

So he was... it's a weird word to use, but the whole thing was like the most badass thing in the world, but also adorable, you know? Because like, you're like seeing these guys who are friends, they all come alive, keep standing up and Paul's playing bass and they're all smiling and laughing and looking around at each other. And the roof left the building and, you know, on the way out, I'll never forget, Paul said, "I just played bass with the f***ing Stones and I'm a f***ing Beatle." That was the greatest quote of all time. And he meant it, he was genuinely so excited to do it. And that's the thing with all these guys, is like they're fans of music. They love this s**t so much. They're fans of each other, they're fans of new artists, they love music.

That's the reason why they're continuing to work and make, they're doing it for themselves. They could have stopped a long time ago, but why would they? If they still have that feeling of being creative and doing it, there's no reason to stop. Look at how great both those albums are. Look at the songs that both those artists are writing. There's no reason for them to not continue to make music.

COLLIDER: I'm sure you saw this, but I'm quoting Paul here, when he said that he came away from his first meeting with you thinking, "well, I like him, but he's a bit pushy." And then he clarified, that "pushy is not bad in a producer. It's enthusiasm for someone who wants to keep making your record and it's infectious." So how do you know when to push an artist with 60 years of experience versus when to defer?

WATT: It comes back down to like your taste, you know, and how you present your ideas. Ideas are taste. There is no right or wrong in art. It's like looking at a painting. How can you say, you know, a Basquiat is better than a Warhol or a Jackson Pollock is better than a Picasso. You can't. It's all different kinds of art.

There's different subcategories within the art, and it's all opinion-based and based on a feeling. So, you give your feelings, go back and forth. If you have a strong instinct about something and your idea is tried, then that's all you can ask for. And then at the end of the day, it comes down to taste, and it's the artist's decision of whether it feels right to them or not, you know. So there it was, your wrong or right is... there isn't really a wrong or right. It's just taste.

So you have to be very open and also, you gotta let your fear go away and know that the things that you're suggesting are for the better of the song that you're creating and only that. It's what is best for this piece of art that I'm making right here in this room, not for anyone else to hear, not for what people are gonna think about it, purely for yourself and what your instinct tells you. If it's for that reason, I've found, for the reason of the art and not the commerce. It's ABC, right? Art before commerce. I have always found that if you're doing it for that reason, people are open, they'll try your idea. And if it's not great, then you go back.

And it's the same thing on both sides. So the producer-artist relationship is a fabled relationship, and there's push and pull, and you go back and forth. It's a very delicate relationship, and you know when it's time to push, and you know when it's time to pull back. You can kind of just feel it. It's a feel thing.

COLLIDER: Do you feel like you, sometimes, have a fresh perspective, being a fan but being also much younger? You've talked about having to tell Mick Jagger that he had to sort of step up his game, so to speak. Like, he could write better lyrics than the ones that he showed you. So maybe you were seeing something that he didn't see himself in his own lyrics?

WATT: Yeah, it's again, it's the same thing. What's better or not better? I don't think I said the word better. It's my opinion, right? It's my opinion. He is such an amazing collaborator. When I said to him, I think these words could be different, it was because that was the way I was feeling when I was reading the story of the song and listening to what he was doing. He said, "okay." Went home, wrote three different versions of the same lyrics, brought them in the next day and said, "read through them and tell me which ones you like the best. I love all of these." He's overachieving and doesn't mind. Again, I'm there because he wants to bounce off me, right?

And he is one of the greatest lyricists of all time in melody writers, and frontmen, and songwriters, all of it. On this latest album, Foreign Tongues, there's a song called "Ringing Hollow," which, you listen to the song, and the first line is, "I was madly in love with you before we ever met. I saw all your movies. I smoked your cigarettes." You think he could be talking about one of the people he dated when he was younger, or an actress, or any of the people that he was famously picked up and pictured with in the '60s or '70s before he kind of went to America.

And you realize as the song is going, he's actually writing about America and his love relationship with America. The song is about America and its current state. He takes you from now to present, back to later. And he's just going through the times of America and what his relationship and his band's relationship is with America, which, in the '60s, everyone just wanted to get to America and break America. And America's gone through many changes since then. So it's one of the greatest lyrics I've ever read for any song that I've ever been a part of.

And it's honestly flawless. I think it's one of his best, best written songs. So you're there to give your opinion and can't be scared. And it's all for the best of the art. And at the end of the day, if you're listening down to the album with the artist and they're jumping up and down or dancing or happy or smiling and loving it and saying, we're done, this is f***ing great, let's master it. That's why I do it for all of us to be happy and feel like we couldn't do any better. If you're left with a piece of your art saying, "I could have done better," f**k that. That'll never be me. That'll never be an album that I work on. You gotta feel like you have nothing left to give. And then it's how you know you're done.

Courtesy of Andrew Watt

COLLIDER: Going back to the pop world a little bit, you worked recently on Madonna's last album. [Confessions II] It's a successor of an album that's over 20 years old [Confessions on a Dance Floor], if I'm not mistaken. What was that process, having to recover, so to speak, some of her earlier music and bring it back to the present and find a common thread with that?

WATT: That wasn't the process at all, at least from my involvement in the album. We kind of organically became friends through her manager, Guy Oseary. We hung out together a couple of times and listened to stuff together and talked about music and kind of kept in touch.

And then I got on a plane to London to go and work with her. And, you know, I'm a New Yorker. I grew up in New York, so I know so much about the history of New York and the history of music in New York. And the club Danceteria was a very important place in the history of music and what happened there. So I started asking her questions about it and the people that she met there. She has the coolest life of anyone. Her stories, you can't even believe, they're so like, you know... Nonchalantly, she drops these stories on you and she's not performative in any way. It's just her life. It's what happened to her. And they're the most amazing stories you've ever heard.

So we were kind of talking as friends, but while, you know, I brought this... [producer] Cirkut and I brought a couple of pieces of music that we had started together and while we're listening to them and talking about them, she started telling us these amazing stories. And I said, "'Danceteria' is such a great name for a song." And she said, "Well, there's so much that happened to me there." I said, "Well, you should go home and write it all down."

And I think it was like three in the morning at that point, after the first day of the idea of doing something with "Danceteria" and getting some words and stuff down. And I was like, "Go home and write down the story, write down the story of going there for the first time." And she came back the next day with these pages and pages and pages of these words which ended up being that third verse of the song... the whole song, actually, all the verses. It was originally this one; long, long, long verse. And then we split it up into all these other verses. It was this whole origin story, which is so deep and so beautiful and so eloquently put and rhymed together.

And it's one of the coolest things I've ever heard. She was so kind, she gave me one of the sheets of paper because at the end of the day, I'll always be a fan. And yeah, it just kept developing and developing and the people that she's name-checking, it sounds like it's like a pop culture lesson in New York at that time, but it's really what happened to her.

That was one of the coolest experiences ever, doing that song. We had three days together, and we ended up having four days together, but in the four days we wrote three songs. And, you know, the other song that went on the record, "Lower East Side Girl", was such an amazing process. We did a completely different thing and just sat with a guitar, sat there and wrote another story of kind of being in New York. And she is one of... obviously, if you listen to her catalog of songs that she's written... she's one of the most amazing songwriters ever. Such an amazing lyricist. You sit with her and these things start pouring out of her, these melodies and these words, the way she writes words.

It was just so cool to watch her process again and be a part of it with her. And it was such a... we had such a high output in those four days. It was such a special time. Stuart, Madonna, Cirkut and I, just sitting in this small studio that was not much bigger than a bedroom and just bouncing off of each other, the four of us. It was extremely, extremely special. We worked from like 11 p.m. to like six in the morning every day. So it was awesome.

COLLIDER: To wrap up here, I'm going to ask you a kind of, I guess, introspective question. It feels like every artist, even hugely established ones that you produce, keep coming back for more. The Stones, Eddie, now McCartney, Madonna... What do you think you give them that keeps them returning and that makes such a big difference to them when they're working with you?

WATT: You'd have to ask them. I don't know how to answer that question. I just... I take it, if I get called back, that means that they were happy with the music that we made. And that is the whole reason I do my job. Seeing an artist happy is the most fulfilling thing for your work and creation. It's beautiful and so much fun.

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Paul McCartney, Madonna and Lady Gaga Officially Found Their Secret Weapon

Дата публикации: 18-08-2026 17:54:43

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