To bestow the title of living legend upon Matt Squire is no exaggeration; his contribution to music, and specifically our scene, is immeasurable. Squire is far too modest to boast about his achievements in any invasive way, so we’ll do it for him – he’s been behind the desk for viral hits by Panic! At The Disco and All Time Low, venturing into pop with Ariana Grande and One Direction before returning to his calling in alternative music just in time to make a Grammy-nominated record with Underoath. The multi-platinum record producer, audio engineer, mixing engineer and songwriter started in our scene and never plans on abandoning it, even after having a taste of what mainstream music production had to offer.
Matt Squire is as close to a living legend that the music industry has these days, although he’s far too modest to boast about his achievements in any invasive way. He’s been behind the desk for viral hits by Panic! At The Disco and All Time Low, venturing into the pop world to work with Ariana Grande and One Direction. When he returned to his calling in alternative music, he didn’t do a half-job, going on to become Grammy-nominated with Underoath. The multi-platinum record producer, audio engineer, mixing engineer and songwriter started in the alternative scene and never plans on leaving, even after having a taste of what mainstream music production had to offer.
“I hit a crossroads where I could have really gone all pop,” he explains over a Zoom with Blunt Magazine. “I was living in LA and I was doing all that, all those sessions, I’m working with all those artists…and I was like, ‘I’m not making music for the kid that I was.’ And I took real issue with that.” He articulates it more deftly than anyone has for a long time, though it still rings as true as it ever did: “I was like, ‘I just don’t know if I can go all in. I think I need to get back to making music for outsiders, for the people that remind me of who I was, so that they don’t commit suicide.’ So, I moved back to DC and reopened the old studio where I’d done the albums with All Time Low, Boys Like Girls, Cute Is What We Aim For, all that stuff.”
Being so prolific in his achievements and what he’s worked on, with ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’ and ‘Dear Maria, Count Me In’ only the beginning, Squire is surprisingly humble. He’s been left with a bad taste in his mouth by producers over-crediting themselves for their work with artists on social media (“I’m like, how does a band feel when they see you saying you wrote their song?”) and saw the milestone of being Grammy-nominated as an opportunity to convey what he does to his family.
“There are very few moments where your family sees all the work pay off, like Underoath, when we got nominated for a Grammy. That was an awesome moment, because my family was like, ‘Oh my God’, like your grandma’s like, ‘That’s crazy.’ But yeah, now they’re starting to see some of the work I do become more visible. It’s a good feeling, but it was never a goal. I assumed that if I wasn’t in a band, I was supposed to be behind the scenes…I could have been in a band and I could have stayed on stage. I made a choice to go behind the window and I always remember that and try to stay grounded.”
Even if you are behind the scenes, being the producer behind iconic albums of the calibre of Squire’s discography does come with a unique feedback loop from fans. There are those who blame Squire for ruining their favourite band’s newest output (they usually end up apologising a short time later), and there are those who revere him for his role in the albums that were formative to their lives. Squire’s role in Panic! At The Disco’s debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, is particularly poignant, especially given it’s the third project he ever produced.
Speaking on its triple platinum status, Squire points out that he thought the band would sell 15,000 records, max. “We didn’t expect that, we had no idea that it was going to hit the level of popularity and then scrutiny that it had. I think to their [the band’s] credit, they were really surprised by how big it got.” With the album sales came an intense level of criticism, although the album has been revered retrospectively.
“It was like, ‘If we had known it was going to be this big, we wouldn’t have done this, we wouldn’t have done that.’ And then you’re in a catch-22, because then it wouldn’t have been as big. There was something about that record that just connected, and I think some if it’s lyrical…And then I think the fact that we didn’t know what we were doing was electric. We broke a lot of rules.” He’s happy for you to criticise him if you’re crazy enough to appreciate the record. It connected, it sold, but most of all, it changed Squire’s life, and he wouldn’t take back a single risk they took.
As we move into a time of global crises, where Aussie bands can no longer travel to meet Squire in his studio (a la The Amity Affliction) and Zoom calls glitch until we cry from frustration, the producer is using his experience to bring forth a new perspective on recording through Entangled Audio, a company that he co-founded that intends to provide modern music tech solutions for the AV industry. What that means is that music recording is becoming more accessible, which Squire was thinking about before we were all no longer allowed to leave our houses.
“In 2014, I had become obsessed with online recording and I had this vision that in the future, we would all have our own little portal and we’d be able to dial each other up and jam and the files would transfer,” he recounts. “We went into lockdown in like, late March last year, and I was talking to my wife and I was like, ‘Nobody’s coming to the studio, we gotta be prepared for that.’ And without skipping a beat, she said, ‘Whatever happened to that platform you were working on a long time again?’” The result is his new company, but also an even better outcome: “I’ve made more music in the past two years than I have in the past eight.”
For someone like the legendary Matt Squire to be positioning flexibility and accessibility in music recording; well, there’s no one more uniquely positioned to vouch for it, is there? We’ll see new music that Squire’s been working on when the bands are ready, but we’ll also see him continue to transform the way that we see music being made, and we’ll all be better for it. At the end of the day, Squire’s heart beats for the alternative scene, and our artists are safe in his hands – he knows us that music can play a role to literally save someone’s life, and that’s all he’s ever wanting to pursue in what he’s doing.
“I don’t care if it’s online or in person, let’s make it good. Let’s make great music for the people that need it. I think it’s been a really tough time for music, but a lot of great stuff is coming out. So I’m stoked about that whether it’s created in a room or online, but we need more. The outsider thing I take on, for myself, it’s very important. And that’s a need that the music community can really serve, is to just keep people from jumping out of windows.”
