MARK RONSON SET TO BRING THE FUNK TO AUSTRALIA TO PROMOTE HIS NEW ALBUM UPTOWN SPECIAL IN FEBRUARY
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GRAMMY® Award-winning producer and musician Mark Ronson will be back in Australia the first week of February to promote his # his 3rd album, UPTOWN SPECIAL.
Set to undertake promotion in Sydney, this will be Ronson’s fourth visit to Australia as a Columbia Records Artist. Stay tuned for more details!
Mark Ronson’s fourth album UPTOWN SPECIAL – out now on Columbia Records through Sony Music Entertainment Australia – is currently #1 on the iTunes album chart.
UPTOWN SPECIAL was written and produced with GRAMMY® -winning producer Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Drake, Alicia Keys) over 18 months in studios in London, Memphis, Los Angeles and New York City. The majority of the album’s lyrics – although not the lead single with Mars – were written by Pulitzer-winning American novelist Michael Chabon. Ronson’s favourite living author, Chabon became a part of the songwriting process early on and was fully immersed in the album’s narrative creation, often working with Ronson and the vocalists in the recording studio.
Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker plays a huge role on the album, lending his signature, woozy vocal to three songs, as well as laying drums, guitars, synths and background vocals on other tracks. Longtime collaborator Miike Snow’s Andrew Wyatt also added his wonderful vocals and songwriting talents. Ronson & Bhasker’s great friend producer Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey, FKA Twigs) also provided some glorious sonic landscapes to the tracks, as did some of Ronson’s favourite producer-peers: Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford (Arctic Monkeys), TNGHT’s Hudson Mohawke and DJ Zinc. And, as always, there is Ronson’s invaluable group of musicians: the Brooklyn-based genius players Homer Steinweiss, Nick Movshon and Tommy Brenneck.
Prior to the start of the recording, on a mission to discover the young female vocalist they had been imagining in their heads while writing these songs, Ronson and Bhasker set out on a vast road trip across the US, driving through New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Memphis, St. Louis, Little Rock and Chicago. Whilst visiting gospel choirs in Jackson, MisssissippI they discovered 23-year old Keyone Starr and were blown away by her impressive range and presence. They immediately invited her into the legendary Royal Studios in Memphis to record. Starr provides lead vocals on three tracks on the album.
‘Uptown Funk’ featuring Bruno Mars has sat at the top of the ARIA Singles Chart for the past 6 six weeks with the single now certified three times Platinum. This is Mark’s first number one single in Australia. Ronson andMars co-wrote and co-produced the track together. The worldwide success of the first single, is not slowing down any time soon – it is the #1 single for a 5th week in the UK, in the US, it is #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and at #1 at over 57 iTunes stores so far – Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa with now over 3 million downloads sold. ‘Uptown Funk’ has also had 75 million audio streams worldwide to date, including 25 million in the US, 10 million in the UK. It is currently holding the #1 place at Spotify globally plus at Spotify in Australia, UK, US, Mexico & France. The VEVO video views are now over 112 million.
At the 2008 GRAMMY® Awards Mark Ronson was named Producer of the Year for his breakthrough second album VERSION along with his work on Winehouse’s BACK TO BLACK and Lily Allen’s ALRIGHT, STILL. He shared two further Grammy Awards with Winehouse that year, taking home statuettes for Best Pop Vocal Album and Record of the Year for ‘Rehab’. The same year he was named Best British Artist at the UK’s BRIT Awards. Ronson received another GRAMMY® nomination in 2014 for his production work on ‘Locked Out Of Heaven’, the single from Bruno Mars’ multiplatinum UNORTHODOX JUKEBOX that topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks in winter 2012/2013.
The international success of VERSION’s 2010 follow-up, RECORD COLLECTION, including being accredited GOLD status in Australia, was followed by series of high profile production gigs for acclaimed albums by Rufus Wainright, Bruno Mars, Action Bronson and (Sir) Paul McCartney. More recently, Ronson gave hugely popular TED Talk on the history of music sampling, which you can check out here.
