MBW’s World’s Greatest Producers series sees us interview – and celebrate – some of the outstanding talents working in studios across the decades. Mike Sabath is the creative collaborator behind Raye’s recent global breakout. He has also produced artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Liam Payne and Madison Beer – and is about to release a debut album of his own. World’s Greatest Producers is supported by Kollective Neighbouring Rights, the neighbouring rights agent that empowers and equips clients with knowledge to fully maximise their earnings.
Mike Sabath travelled halfway round the world to get to Glastonbury 2025, but it was only when he arrived that he realized exactly why he was there.
Stood in the crowd as Raye – much of whose landmark My 21st Century Blues album Sabath had produced – entranced the Pyramid Stage, lost in her moment of personal and musical redemption, he had his own flash of revelation.
“Raye and I met when we were 18 or 19,” he says. “Getting to watch an artist play in tiny rooms and make music with them, have that music connect and then be standing with 100,000 people at Glastonbury and they’re singing our lyrics is fucking ridiculous.
“Getting to see the vision that I always had for her and always believed in and she always, at her core, believed in for herself, and people crying, dancing and singing… It was absolutely beautiful. Making something that connects is such an insane feeling.”
Of course, Sabath would hardly be the first musician to arrive on Worthy Farm and get high on the leylines and the general vibes. But you get the impression he’s always like this. He speaks passionately about how music is core to the human experience and how his recent solo tour, in which he drove around America in an RV, recording in the wild and playing shows for whoever and wherever would have him, was driven to prove his personal “thesis that humans are good”.
Speaking in laidback tones and long, sometimes tangential sentences, Sabath occasionally sounds as much like a cult leader as a top hitmaker – he says he uses the interview process to understand himself better (“I’m an unusual guy – I’m learning that I’m more unusual than I really understood, to be honest”). But it’s this deep thinking, empathetic approach and unique worldview that makes him such an exceptional producer, the person musicians call when they want to get their true, artistic self out there.
Sabath grew up outside New York and started playing music very young, but always took it seriously. His parents pushed him academically but supported his music career, as long as the latter didn’t affect the former. So Sabath would diligently do all his homework at school in breaktime so that, when he got home, he could head straight to the basement and make music.
His two worlds only diverged when he turned down a place at Harvard to concentrate on his music – and landed a publishing deal with what was then Sony/ATV three hours later. Even with that deal in his pocket, he’d hustle relentlessly: he would sit in the middle seat on any flight so he could make two different connections, while he and his manager would turn up to studios and blag their way into sessions (“It was absolutely psychotic, but it worked”).
It paid off too. He co-wrote sports highlights favorite Get Loud For Me with Gizzle at a Sony songwriting camp, Aaron Bay-Schuck – now CEO and co-chairman of Warner Records, but then an Interscope A&R – asked him to collaborate with Selena Gomez and suddenly he was being invited into sessions, rather than gatecrashing them.
Still signed to Sony today, he’s subsequently worked with everyone from Sabrina Carpenter to Lizzo, Zara Larsson to Meghan Trainor, and Liam Payne to Madison Beer. It’s since he shifted his approach, however – devoting time and energy to major projects rather than doing multiple sessions with multiple artists – that his stock has really soared. As well as collaborating on My 21st Century Blues and Raye’s hotly anticipated follow-up (Sabath co-wrote and produced Raye’s current smash, Where Is My Husband!), he helped craft Shawn Mendes’ uber-personal Shawn album.
And he’s worked with former Little Mix star Jade, co-writing and producing several tracks on her That’s Showbiz Baby! album, including the epic single Angel Of My Dreams (“That was a day of not giving a literal fuck, and that aligned with her needing to say something to the music industry”).
Sabath originally wanted to be an artist and spent the summer re-focused on his solo career, releasing an excellent double single, Do You Mind?/High, with an album, Attention Maximum, on the way. He buzzes about his tour, which saw him performing everywhere from Bonnaroo – where he played on the roof of his RV, despite the festival being washed out – to random farms in Missouri (“They let us play for their hillbilly community and shoot fireworks”).
He plans to continue his solo career alongside his production work (“It’s cool how they feed each other), with multiple big studio projects on the horizon, and also wants to help mentor young producers in the way the craft’s elder statesmen and women welcomed him as the new kid on the block.
First, however, he needs to sit down in his LA studio and channel his energy into talking MBW through streaming, AI and Raye’s big lesson for the music industry…
HAS IT BEEN NICE TO EMBRACE YOUR ARTIST SIDE?
Yeah, it’s been important. Four or five months ago, when I was working on literally four albums at once and it was out of control and really intense, I was feeling like I couldn’t touch production for a second. I was really tired in that space.
My own art is an important side of my life that really needed attention, so I gave it that time. What’s beautiful is, I’m now returning to production fully energized. They are really two different basins of energy and they enable each other to grow.
I feel so fresh, like I’m at the beginning of this new chapter of my production career, and I have zero ego right now. That’s so important; a pinch of ego had arrived and now, in this new chapter, I feel like a student again.
WAS IT A BRAVE DECISION TO PUT YOUR PRODUCTION WORK ON HOLD?
When I was younger, it was much easier to make insane decisions, because you’ve got no fear – like, ‘I don’t even know what fear means, fuck it.’
As I’ve gotten a little older and been afraid of things, I’m lucky that I made some big brave decisions when I was younger that really changed my life. I’ve been able to reference those in moments when I need to choose something scary and been like, ‘Well, when you decided this, something responded’. Bravery is rewarded, but fear is the ultimate killer of anything.
“Life ultimately comes down to honing your instinct, trusting that and letting it be the guide to making choices.”
Life ultimately comes down to honing your instinct, trusting that and letting it be the guide to making choices – whether that’s life choices, money, where I spend my energy, which instruments I’m choosing for a different record at different moments, or which artists I’m working with.
IS THAT HARDER TO DO WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH ON AN ARTIST’S PROJECT, LIKE THEY WERE WITH RAYE’S ALBUM?
That was a scary choice; it was riskier, potentially financially, it was less stable. But when I decided to do the Raye album, that ultimately completely elevated and changed my production career. And her career too.
It literally gave both of us such an enormous jump in our careers and that was because I was like, ‘It’s time to focus on something I really believe in and see what happens when I do that’. Rather than put my energy all over the place, I’ll put it in one place and be with someone amazing.
SHE MADE A BOLD CHOICE HERSELF, LEAVING HER LABEL AND GOING IT ALONE. WERE YOU AWARE OF HOW VITAL IT WAS FOR HER CAREER THAT THIS RECORD SUCCEEDED?
That wasn’t a thought. Her deciding, ‘No more of this, I refuse’, changed her life.
We have so much love for each other, which is also the foundation of a great record: love and trust between the producer and the artist. But a big reason the record was great because I was certainly not bringing any energy into the room around, ‘This has to be so good or it’s like…’ Because if you bring that in, all of a sudden, you’re doing it for someone else. And if you’re making music for someone else, it’s going to probably be fucking mid.
My entire focus in that album was Rachel. I said, ‘People don’t know you as an artist yet, they know you as a voice, and we’re introducing you as an artist.’
That was everything. Every time she was like, ‘Shall we put one of these [more commercial] types of songs on it?’, I was like, ‘Raye, we’re introducing you as an artist, remember? Whatever story you need to tell and whatever you need to share, is the only thing we need to be focused on’.
DID YOU AT LEAST REALIZE HOW SUCCESSFULLY YOU WERE DOING THAT?
No, I didn’t bring that into the room either! I really tried to not think about anything that would happen after [the record’s release], I was trying to be as present as possible.
“That is my job as a producer: to trust my instincts and the people I’m working with so I can get them into a space of openness, trust, truth and love.”
If it’s going well and the artist’s eyes are glowing and they’re inspired, the job of the producer is to get the human you’re working with aligned with themselves, remove their fear and activate it. That’s the goal. If you can get any human like that it’s great, but if you can get a human who is also talented in that space, you’re probably going to make something fucking sick. That’s the secret.
That is my job as a producer: to trust my instincts and the people I’m working with so I can get them into a space of openness, trust, truth and love. The talent they have will then come through and then, as long as I steer the ship – and, at this point, I can produce a song – then that’s kinda that.
DO YOU THINK RAYE’S SUCCESS TAUGHT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY A LESSON?
I do. That record, that moment and her career now, that was impactful.
Labels were shifting anyway, but that was the most significant moment of an artist doing something a) not with a major, and b) publicly being like, ‘I don’t need one’.
It switched up labels. Labels are tricky because they’re firing everyone and they’re really just operating off analytics, and that’s weird. Ultimately, that means it’s up to the creatives to keep things going that are from a place of art, rather than a place of numbers. Being on the artist side, it’s scary, it’s really hard to have [your career] be sustainable so it makes sense why it’s been discouraging for a lot of people.
But it cycles and I think a lot of great art is coming back. We’re seeing a lot of great shit happening and we’re seeing people respond to art. They’re also responding to things that are numerically doing well, but people are open to people making things they’re inspired about.
DOES THE INDUSTRY PLACE ENOUGH VALUE ON SONGWRITERS AND PRODUCERS?
Some people do, some people don’t. Socially, they’re being like, ‘We have to celebrate the songwriters, do these awards and talk about these things’. But paying them well? It’s like, ‘Errr…’.
There are people who are fighting. Big Jon [Platt, pictured] at Sony [Music Publishing], for example, is fucking amazing. He actively tries to push for the forward motion of business for songwriters. I respect that man so much, he really shows a lot of love socially and in person for songwriters and backs it. But it’s obviously hard to move giant businesses.
There are so many things in America that used to be quiet that are now loud, so people can be aware, make noise and push energy towards shifting things – and it’s the same in music.
More people are aware that songwriters even exist – that was not even a thing the public knew about at all. People were like, ‘I thought every artist wrote their songs?’
And, within the industry, songwriters are more aware because there are now TikTok or Instagram accounts that provide information.
There’s more money in music than ever before – that’s something that is kept quiet. And this certain percentage of it is going to labels, streaming platforms etc, this percentage is going to artists and this percentage to songwriters and producers.
I’ve been working in the music industry for eight years and I’m still like, ‘Wait, how do I get paid? How does it work? There’s 100 points and we only have, like, four? Hold on!’
So, just getting the information is really important for the community to be like, ‘Shit, we should probably stand up because we make all the songs!’
“We’re in transition, the old ways are becoming old, the people who want to keep it that way are fighting and the people who want change are fighting and eventually it will shift, because that’s how it goes.”
We’re in transition, the old ways are becoming old, the people who want to keep it that way are fighting and the people who want change are fighting and eventually it will shift, because that’s how it goes. But it’s going to take more time.
It’s discouraging a lot of creatives from creating and it’s making that step from amateur to pro really hard. Because, as a songwriter, you can only make money if you have a big song, and having a big song takes years. You can have a hit randomly but to have a sustainable career, it takes so long to get into a room where you’re able to have a big song.
It’s preventing a lot of people from pursuing it and committing to it, which will then create more space for a robot to make the songs.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT AI’S POTENTIAL IMPACT ON PRODUCTION AND SONGWRITING?
AI is a really helpful tool. But I don’t support it being in the forefront of music-making. It probably can make good songs, but I don’t think that’s cool. That’s putting energy into non-human activity, and I personally support human activity.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU BECOME A MASSIVE STAR AS AN ARTIST?
That would be so fun! But I’d definitely still want to make records with other people. I love making music and, when I’m in that space, I have the best time of my life. When something is such a part of you, you forget how important it is to your equation of peace.
If you’re doing anything, make sure you’re doing it for yourself, and not for other people, because you’re not going to be happy. If you’re making music to prove something to someone else, you probably should do something else. But, if you’re making music because it fuels your soul, you should do it, no matter what.
Follow the thing that makes your eyes glow and your heart open, because it’s good for you and, ultimately, it’s going to be good for everyone else around you.
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