Producer of the year 2025: Erin LeCount’s mission for her undiluted vision
Music in 2025 has been shaped by the talent of incredible producers.
Some of those names you know well enough already: Jack Antonoff with his continued pop domination, Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey and his immeasurably impact on new alternative work, the rising production duo of Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser who found Addison Rae’s sound, and so on. There is one name, however, you should shout from the rooftops: Erin LeCount.
When a relationship between an artist and their producer goes well, it’s great. However, time and time again, it’s proven that there is nothing quite like self-production and the freedom and power that it grants an artist.
Self-production calls into question what the entire point of music making is and what people’s roles in its craft are. It seems that each and every time an artist finally decides to slim their team down and do their own production, they can’t talk enough about the way it opens them up, granting them a clearer path to merely follow their vision without compromise or distraction.
One of the clearest examples of this in music history is Prince. At just 18, he walked into the Warner Bros offices and told them he was making an album, and he wanted no interference. If they liked it, they could release it. The result was For You, a record he wrote, produced, and performed entirely on his own. It proved his talent across the board, earned him a record deal, and changed his life because he trusted his vision and followed through.
The clearest example of that in 2025 is Erin LeCount, an artist who, at age 22, dedicated herself to working with the same lack of intervention to create the same passion-fuelled, undiluted product.
LeCount’s story is a deeply inspiring one that began with merely an idea. “I’d never had such a strong idea of what I wanted something to sound like,” she told Far Out as she began to hear the beginnings of her track ‘Marble Arch’ in her head.
She could hear the different beats and layers clearly, but had to admit she wasn’t yet sure how to create something like that, as her production journey was still just beginning.
Others might give in and go find someone with more experience, attempt to explain the track to them and hope for the best. LeCount didn’t do that, though, staying dedicated to her idea and deciding to instead teach herself and essentially train all for the cause of that song.
“I could hear where I wanted it to be, but as a producer, I had to catch up to be able to make it,” she said, adding, “All the other songs were training.”
In April 2025, ‘Marble Arch’ was finally complete and released alongside four other ‘training’ songs on her EP, I Am Digital, I Am Divine. Much like Prince’s record, this changed her life.
‘Silver Spoon’ blew up online, and ‘Marble Arch’, the track that was made with so much devotion, grew that cult even more. Since then, two more singles, ‘808 Hymn’ and ‘Machine Ghost’, show her development even more as two intricately layered but even more epic songs that make perfect sense as to how she’s levelled up from 320 capacity rooms to capping off her year at London’s KOKO, with 1,500 fans.
But overwhelmingly, this hinges on LeCount’s production. Her songwriting is excellent, her voice is hypnotic, but the magic in all her work is the clear fact that her own hands do everything, and her decisions are all in service to the song, no matter how tricky it might be to make a drum beat out of swords clanging, or to put her own heartbeat in as the bass. It’s a powerful reminder of why independence as an artist always leads to the best work, as LeCount’s vision is never weakened by outsiders.
Reflecting on her breakout year, LeCount told Far Out, “I feel very honoured to be put forward for this, especially because it’s the first year I’ve felt genuine courage and conviction in calling myself a producer, the right to introduce myself as a producer, and the ability to stand by my ideas, my creative choices, to be the person to believe in them, instead of waiting to be told they’re good.”
Forever sticking true to her self-production as a way to make her art all the more personal and powerful, she concluded, “I’m making things I love in a way that feels like mine, and it’s very gratifying that it’s resonating.”
