“If you’re here, you already ‘get it,’” SiriusXM host Jenny Eliscu declared on the Resonator Awards, held Tuesday to honor six trailblazing girls — recording artists Alanis Morissette, Caroline Polachek, and Corinne Bailey Rae, and behind-the-scenes innovators Catherine Marks, Laura Sisk, and Jennifer Decilveo — for his or her work as producers, engineers and mixers. The inaugural Grammy week occasion at Hollywood hotspot Beauty & Essex was offered by We Are Moving the Needle, a non-profit based in 2021 by Emily Lazar (the primary feminine mastering engineer to win the Grammy for greatest engineered album, for Beck’s “Colors”) to advance gender fairness within the audio trade.
Eliscu then rattled off some discouraging statistics uncovered by the group’s latest Fix the Mix Report about illustration in recording studios (as an example, that cis males outnumber girls and non-binary audio professionals 49-to-1, and that each one of YouTube’s 10 most-streamed tracks of 2022 have been produced solely by males), indicating that many trade gatekeepers sadly nonetheless don’t get it. But there was nonetheless a variety of hope within the room.
“This truly is an incredible honor, not just because of the award itself, but because of what this will mean for our industry as a whole,” gushed Marks, who obtained the Powerhouse Award for her work on Boygenius’s album of the 12 months Grammy contender, “The Record.” “When I first started out in studios nearly 20 years ago, this sort of [honor] would not have been receivable. I didn’t really know of anyone else like me doing what I wanted to do. Back then, the culture in studios was very competitive, no matter your gender, but women also tended to be subconsciously pitted against other women. … Many years later, Emily and I would form what could only be described as a long-distance love affair: emails, late-night phone calls, texts, plotting world domination, figuring out ways how we could mentor and lift other women up, give us more visibility and change the culture in studios. Fast-forward to 2024, and I’ve witnessed so much change for the better.”
“This is going to be the Grammy party of the Grammys, for all the years to come!” file producer Jennifer Decilveo additionally optimistically declared, as she accepted her All-Star Award.
The evening’s prime honor, the Luminary Award, went to Morissette, launched by her ‘90s peer Shirley Manson, who instructed Variety, “Alanis is very dear to me for a lot of different reasons; I admire her very much, not only for what she’s achieved, but what she tries to facilitate for other people. She’s a rare beast!” The Garbage frontwoman, who’d first offered Morissette with an award 25 years in the past on the 1999 Grammys, chucklingly recalled Morissette gifting her with a witch’s broomstick after they toured collectively in 2021 (“I’m sure many of you in the room will get the symbolism behind such a gift”), and extra significantly praised her buddy for navigating “what essentially remains a patriarchal, male-dominated entertainment industry” with “astounding grace, vigor and good humor, whilst always pushing for better solutions and situations for all.”
Addressing what she sweetly known as her “favorite room,” Morissette then joked about her and Manson “white-knuckling” their approach by the ‘90s; present process “copious amounts of therapy” for “complex PTSD — complex patriarchy stress disorder”; and feeling like a delicate “poodle inside a black stallion body” for a lot of her profession. She additionally spoke concerning the energy and magic of femininity, explaining, “Just the honoring of the feminine is everything to me, whether it’s in a man body or a woman body or a gender-non-conforming body. … Bless the continuum of masculine and feminine. What I love about working with women, there’s billions of things, but one of them is how quickly we have access to the masculine and the feminine qualities at any given moment. There can be the receptivity of listening and honoring each other, holy space, those silences, the hours and hours of silences and just quietly supporting each other, and then the actionability and the masculine quality. So, for me, feminism is about the feminine in all bodies, all sexual proclivities, all of it. Honoring the feminine tonight is a really big deal, and it’s why I showed up. Thank you, Emily, for creating spaces like this, because as I get older, I just have less patience for hatred of the feminine. And that’s a very good thing — it makes it so we walk out of rooms that are not interacting with us in a way that honors what we’re providing.”
Morissette, whose speech was roaringly obtained, was understandably the belle of the Resonator ball. Bedroom-pop artist Remi Wolf (one of many ceremony’s three performers, together with former Cherry Glazerr keyboardist-turned-solo star Sasami and electropop singer-songwriter Empress Of) bravely coated the “Jagged Little Pill” hit “Hand in My Pocket” whereas Morissette appeared on, and indie-rock darling Polachek interrupted her personal acceptance speech to fangirlishly gasp, “Alanis, are you here with us tonight? ‘Jagged Little Pill’ was the first album I ever owned, and it’s because I begged for it feverishly at age 10. Your music woke up some big, big feelings in me that would later come out through my music. So, thank you. It’s a thrill to get to tell you that in person tonight.”
But there was a variety of love for everybody Tuesday, beginning when Polachek was offered with the Golden Trifecta Award, which works to “an innovator who breaks down traditional barriers and makes magic happen on both sides of the glass,” by three-time Grammy-winning producer Ariel Rechtshaid. Rechtshaid flat-out instructed Polachek, “You’re the shit,” and admitted that working together with her principally entailed “watching her do everything herself.” The viewers, which included Lisa Loeb, Bethany Cosentino, Robert Glasper, Christina Perri, Thundercat, Shailene Woodley and Princess Superstar, then erupted in applause when Polachek said, “When [my former band Chairlift] finally got our first chance to be in the studio, that thing would happen — it’s that thing that maybe some of the girls in the room tonight have experienced, where you ask for someone to turn something up, and the guy’s hand on the fader doesn’t do anything. Sooner or later, I learned that music production was a lot easier than backseat driving. … As much as [taking on all] that responsibility sucks, sometimes it does come with a limitless potential to bring all these different components into one vision. And once you get a taste of that, your hand’s not coming off that fader.”
Sisk’s Exceptional Ears Award, which “recognizes a leading engineer whose technical artistry has made a noteworthy mark on the field,” was offered by a equally fawning Jack Antonoff, who described working with “sonic partner” Sisk as “one of the greatest relationships in my life” and stated, “Her opinion means more to me than anything. She’s my favorite engineer and mixer of all time.” Sisk then thanked Taylor Swift, with whom she has labored since ‘1989’ (“The album, not the year!”), for “the endless inspiration,” saying Swift’s “re-records specifically have been an incredible engineering challenge and an intellectual and technical and creative pursuit.” Sisk additionally shouted out one other longtime collaborator, Lana Del Rey, for “her endless experimentation in the studio, her excitement, and her creativity. She’s always pushing for a new sound, and it’s just an incredible and inspiring process to be a part of. The way she’s believed in me and supported me has always been something I’ve held close.”
Phoebe Bridgers of Boygenius, Catherine Marks, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker of Boygenius on the Resonator Awards held at Beauty & Essex on January 30, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Penske)
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Other ceremony highlights included Corinne Bailey Rae, who received the Harmonizer Award for being “a creator who uses music to leverage social change,” proudly revealing {that a} male colleague had as soon as known as her the “most controlling person” he’d ever met, and Marks, who obtained her award from Boygenius themselves, taking a second to marvel in any respect the “fucking powerful, badass, ridiculously talented, successful women” gathered within the room. Music govt Christine Thomas of Dolby Labs obtained the Equalizer Award, and Transformer Award winner Michael Goldstone of Mom+Pop Music, the evening’s lone male honoree, credited Mom+Pop act Tegan and Sara for uplifting him to “approach things differently musically, culturally, and to always strive for diversity in the music that we released.” He additionally warned different males within the enterprise to not be “part of the problem.”
The ceremony moreover introduced the primary inductees within the Resonator Hall of Fame, together with Linda Perry, who instructed Variety that she was dissatisfied that her 2019 Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year – the primary time a girl had been up for that award since 2004 – hadn’t modified the Recording Academy’s “archaic process.” (No girl has been nominated in that class since.) Onstage at Beauty & Essex, Perry stated in her sometimes blunt method, “Having acknowledgement for the impact you’re making in the music business is fucking awesome. It feels good to be acknowledged for shit that you do.”
“Looking out at this room filled with such a diverse collection of awe-inspiring creators and leaders, it’s hitting me right now exactly how historic this night is,” stated We Are the Needle’s Lazar, after she was shocked by producer Claudia Brant together with her personal Hall of Fame induction. “I discover myself right here on the opposite aspect of the microphone, and I’ve been looking for the fitting option to discuss concerning the present second we face in our trade, as a result of I do really feel that we’re on the precipice of nice change. I feel this second brings us to an trustworthy turning level for the tradition of our trade, and it affords us some nice promise and alternative. And it’s a second that requires participation from all of us.
“We’re not a ‘women’s organization.’ We’re an organization that is fighting for the equity of all of us.”