The rebirth of Ronson

Songwriter, DJ and record producer Mark Ronson has been through a period of renewal. Following divorce, he's now happily remarried and has become a dad for the first time in mid-life. Not only that but he is turning his attentions to a new skill: composing a film score, as he tells Rolling Stone UK

- By Rachel Felder. Photography by Jack Bridgeland

Promptness isn’t a virtue you’d usually expect from a record producer — especially first thing in the morning — but Mark Ronson has an excuse for running late that’s undeniably valid, and it has nothing to do with having spent an extra-long night in the studio, or watching a buzzworthy new artist perform in a crowded club until well past midnight. On the warm and sunny morning that he’s scheduled for an interview in his downtown Manhattan studio, he’s been spending time at home with his baby daughter Ruth, who was born a few months ago.

“I was leaving this morning, but I hadn’t got a smile out of her,” he explains, settled onto a stool in the studio’s control room, in front of stacks of speakers and a vintage recording console. “I was like, ‘I’m late, but I can’t leave until I see her smile this morning.’ I mean, it’s so clichéd, but everything she does is completely enchanting.”

Certainly, Ronson’s life is in quite a different place than when he wrote his last album, 2019’s Late Night Feelings. That record — which featured vocals by artists like Miley Cyrus, Camila Cabello and Lykke Li — was inspired by the end of his marriage to his first wife, Joséphine de La Baume, who he divorced in 2018. These days, he’s happily remarried to actress Grace Gummer, enjoying the experience of being a new father, and working on a musical project — more of which in a minute — that deliberately affords him a more manageable schedule than he’s had in the past.