Daniel Nigro on Why He’s Really a ‘Band Member,’ Not Just a Producer and Writer, for Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo
On the latest episode of Variety‘s Strictly Business podcast, Daniel Nigro discusses the evolving role of the writer-producer in pop music, and why he sees himself as being more of a de facto “band member” than overseer for artists like Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo.
“I come from being in a band,” says Nigro, who is being honored as Producer of the Year at Variety‘s Hitmakers event on Dec. 7. “I come from a world where it’s a team of people making music. And I feel so lucky that I met Olivia and I met Chappell because to me, they’re these incredible artists that needed, like, a band member (as) somebody else to make music with… I don’t wanna say it’s easy to make a song, but it’s easier to make a song than it was 20 years ago. But because people are able to work individually, it makes it harder for people to want to get together in a group of four or five people and really like hash out making a song. So I just think that nowadays, there’s room for producers to play the role of the band.”
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Even though Rodrigo and Roan are generally considered pop artists, “They’re both rock ‘n’ rollers in my opinion,” Nigro says. “And that’s kind of why I gravitated towards them as a quote unquote band member, as a team player: I just love their rock ‘n’ roll spirit. Both of them just have such attitude and grit in the way that they approach making music. And I love that about them and always want to help them bring that part out in the music, you know? … They’re both rockers in the best way possible.”
Nigro also speaks about the transitions he’s made in the business, starting with his nearly decade-long stint in the band As Tall as Lions in the 2000s. Coming out of that band and looking toward a behind-the-scenes role, he’d assumed he would take a path strictly as a songwriter — and perhaps a very niche kind of songwriter “I really never thought I would be a producer,” he says. “I mean, the whole world of songwriting and production to me was so new. I moved out to L.A. in 2011 and at the time I really just wanted to be able to make a living making music. And at the time, the way that I saw a path forward for me was to be a jingle writer.”
Having some success in the jingle world, he moved more toward pop songwriting. “I started to realize after a few years of doing it that the producer was kind of the gateway into the world of getting the song to an artist or to talking to the record labels. And as a songwriter, you don’t have a lot of control as to what happens with your song…. All the while from 2011 until I really started to make the switch (to production) in 2016, 2017, I was honing my production chops and never felt like fully confident that I could do a production fully by myself. But I was getting better and better, and time was on my side in that sense, because I was able to make money as a jingle writer, so I was able to spend time focusing on my production…
“It is so hard to make money as a songwriter nowadays, unless you have a hit song. It really becomes difficult because there’s not a lot of album sales. And then also the streaming favors the master side. So obviously producers are making money on the master side more than the songwriters are. So it definitely favors the artist and the producer in that sense.”
Nigro talks in the podcast about the success of Roan’s new country song “The Giver” — even though its sole “release” has been a premiere performance on “Saturday Night Live.” Another song from their sophomore-album-in-progress, “Subway,” also has strong fan traction from live performances.
“This goes to ‘The Giver’ and I guess also to ‘Subway’: it is really interesting having songs out on the internet that are not released commercially yet, and seeing people like interpret them, which is kind of wild, having people cover your songs and they’re songs that aren’t even out,” he says. “I find that that part of it to be pretty fascinating. I’ve seen some pretty incredible covers of ‘Subway’ already where I’m like, wow, that is such a beautiful interpretation of the song. … I feel very honored that people do that.”
Meanwhile, he and Roan experienced a unique phenomenon in 2024 when the song “Good Luck, Babe!” and the album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” were both becoming major hits simultaneously — even though the former song was a non-album track. The host points out that that has rarely happened since the Beatles used to regularly release non-album singles.
“Wasn’t ‘Good Vibrations’ not on an album?,” too, Nigro asks — correctly. “I watched a Beach Boys documentary, and I didn’t realize that ‘Good Vibrations’ was just a one-off single. Which is kind of crazy… No, it’s pretty amazing to have a song that is not on an album — to see them both kind of going on their own separate terms is pretty special.”
“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.
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