If you were one of the 17 million people watching the Grammy Awards on 4 February, chances are you spotted indie supergroup Boygenius hanging out with a woman in a matching white suit.

That woman was Catherine Marks, the producer and engineer whose prodigious talent and deft touch has helped steer artists including Wolf Alice, Alanis Morrissette, St Vincent, Manchester Orchestra and Foals to some of their most successful and critically adored works to date. In just a few years, she has become one of the most hotly demanded producers around, helping her collaborators – including Boygenius on their critically adored 2023 debut, The Record – secure a string of Top 10 releases along with industry prestige. 

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Marks developed her love of music from a young age, touring around Europe playing piano from the age of 15. “It was an amazing experience, even though I’m sure I was a precocious little shit,” she recalls with a laugh. 

Travelling to so many different countries was “incredible and inspiring”, but then Marks began to reach a point where she found herself thinking about all the different possibilities for other artist’s music. “I’d change the chords of someone’s work because they weren’t satisfying to me, and that infuriated my tutor,” she grins. “But then she paired me with a composer who taught me that there are no rules in music.”

Marks has taken that advice to heart ever since. It's one of the myriad reasons why some of the most pioneering artists of our time are so drawn to her. She’s the recipient of several major awards, including the Music Producers Guild’s top accolade, “Producer of the Year”, in 2018. She won a Grammy for Best Rock Song the following year, thanks to her work on St Vincent’s universally acclaimed fifth studio album, MASSEDUCTION. She was nominated for another three, including the coveted Album of the Year, in her role as co-producer on boygenius’s debut, The Record, at the 2024 ceremony. She also won the coveted Producer Of The Year at 2023’s A&R Awards. 

“I just work with people who inspire me, and that gives me joy every day that I walk into the studio,” Marks says. “It’s less about going for the hits or working with the guaranteed Number Ones than finding the artists who are doing something different.”

It’s often been noted that Marks is rare not just for her talent, but for her status as one of the few prominent female producers in a notoriously male-dominated field. “I’ve had to deal with a lot of bullshit,” she acknowledges. “It’s been intense – I’ve had several breakdowns! This thing that I do has been my whole life, and it is very much part of my identity. There’ve been a lot of sacrifices. But I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Marks notes that she was often one of the only female producers artists had worked with. “For the first few years, I did everything to avoid being sexualised. I cut all my hair off, I dressed down.”

She feels grateful to have found long-term mentors – men she now counts as friends – among the less savoury characters. She met producer Flood (U2, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, The Killers) through Crowded House bassist Nick Seymour while living in Dublin, on a break from studying for a degree in architecture. 

“Everyone knew each other in that town, and I was shameless, just going around asking for opportunities to work on albums,” she says. She was invited by Elastica to compose a piano tune for them, which Flood ended up hearing. Finish your degree, he told her, then we’ll talk. 

“Flood would argue that I badgered him, but I would say we had a mutual friendship where he was guiding me through the process,” Marks says fondly. She went back to Melbourne, played in a few bands and finished her studies. By 2005, she found herself in London, working for Flood. “I didn’t know what it meant to be an assistant in a recording studio,” she admits. “I thought I’d arrive and I’d be making records straight away... I wasn’t, I was making tea.” 

Yet she views those as the formative (albeit miserable) years of her career: “I had no money, I had no support system, I had no friends other than the people I was meeting through work. It was very lonely. I knew I was doing things wrong but no one would tell me what I was doing wrong. I was crying almost every day…”

Marks is this candid because she believes that it’s important to be open about her experiences, both good and bad. “It can be terrifying, trying to make something of yourself in this industry,” she says. “Going from working with an architecture firm to ‘tea-maker’ was a really hard pill to swallow. I had to learn humility. I also transformed my whole personality, and it took a long time to get back to myself.” 

Going through such fraught times has clearly enabled Marks to empathise with anyone experiencing something similar. A number of artists (and the critics reviewing their work) have observed that she seems to bring something unexpected out of them. 

For Howling Bells, it meant one of the best-received albums of their career, in the form of 2013’s Heartstrings. Marks, who was recommended to the band by producer Alan Moulder (Arctic Monkeys, Nine Inch Nails, The Killers), was widely credited for eliciting exceptional performances from the Australian rock band. The same went for Alanis Morissette, who received glowing reviews for her 2020 comeback record, Such Pretty Forks in the Road. 

Boygenius – the “supergroup” comprising US solo artists Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker – initially reached out to her with a request that she produce their self-titled debut EP. They’d been struck by her work on Manchester Orchestra’s A Black Mile to the Surface, but by then, Marks was busy working on her next project. “So we had a call at the end of 2021 – and I don’t think they were talking to anyone else for it,” she recalls. “And we ended up spending about a month together, sculpting the record.”

She describes it as one of the best recording experiences of her career to date. “I wasn’t as familiar with their work as individuals, but by the end I was in awe,” she says. “They’re some of the best songwriters in the world right now. There was laughter, there were tears.” 

It felt “awesome” to be nominated at this year’s Grammy Awards. “I attribute it to boygenius, really,” she says. “They hit a zeitgeist, a social and cultural significance that has allowed more people to hear the record we made together. I feel like it deserves that.”

Marks was asked in a recent profile for The Hollywood Reporter why there are so few female producers in the industry. “The thing is, there are more than you think,” she suggests, “but careers don’t happen overnight. We’re always lamenting the ‘lack of’, but focusing on the negative is not helpful. We need to celebrate the ones who are there.”

It helps, she says, to be part of a culture that is now more at ease celebrating the successes of women. “I love that, and I really embrace it.”