Max HeyraudTitled Control, the series is narrated by Renn Miano and produced by Kate Butler. It explores the contributions of women producers, engineers, and technologists who have shaped recorded music, while also questioning why their presence remains so underrepresented in today’s industry.
The series begins by returning to the 1980s, a decade when synthesisers, drum machines, and affordable studio technology transformed how music was made. Rather than reinforcing the idea that this era was dominated by male technicians, Control highlights how women were actively working with these tools to produce influential and commercially successful records.
Across its first three episodes, the series focuses on four artists with Irish connections: Mariah Carey, Kate Bush, Enya, and Sinéad O’Connor, highlighting how each played a pioneering role in the recording studio. It shows how their creative practices extended far beyond their vocal performances, positioning them as active architects of their sound. These stories collectively challenge the idea of women as solely vocalists, instead framing them as creative decision-makers who shape the structure and direction of their recordings.
Despite this history, the series contrasts the past with the present. According to USC Annenberg (2025), just 5.9% of the top-charting hits in the United States in 2024 were produced by women. Control uses this figure as a starting point to examine how such an imbalance persists, even decades after the rise of accessible music technology.
The series challenges the long-standing assumption that women primarily occupy the role of singer, while men dominate technical and production spaces. Contributor Emma Dabiri describes this separation as a “binary trap”, a cultural framing that divides performance from technical authorship and continues to shape hiring, crediting, and recognition within the industry.
Control argues that this divide is not simply symbolic, but structural. It affects who is encouraged to learn production skills, who is trusted in studio environments, and whose work is ultimately recognised in credits and industry narratives. The series also explicitly includes trans women, femmes, and genderqueer people within its framing of “women,” broadening the scope of whose labour is considered part of this history.
The series asks why the story of music production still so often excludes the people who have always been part of it. By revisiting the studio histories of the 1980s and connecting them to present-day disparities, the series reframes the studio as a space where questions of power, credit, and cultural memory continue to play out.
