Steve Mac is one of the most successful British songwriters and producers in history.
Mac has racked up over 30 No.1 singles in the United Kingdom and has been associated with over 240 hit albums and singles, globally.
His songs have been recorded by the likes of Mabel, Ed Sheeran, Chainsmokers, Pink, Bastille, Tom Walker, Chvrches, Anne-Marie, Clean Bandit, Little Mix, Years & Years, Kelly Clarkson and Westlife, amongst several others.
Mac was a co-writer and co-producer of Sheeran’s Shape Of You, which stands as the most popular track of all time on Spotify, with over 2.5 billion streams.
Another Mac credit appears on Happier by Marshmello, feat. Bastille – which still holds the record for the most weeks at No.1 on Billboard‘s Hot Dance/Electronic Chart in the US, retaining the title for 76 weeks.
Other global hits penned by Mac include Ed Sheeran and Camila Cabello’s South Of The Border, Clean Bandit’s Rockabye, as well as Mabel’s Mad Love and Don’t Call Me Up.
Mac entered the music business in the early ’90s as part of the British house music scene.
He co-wrote (I Wanna Give You) Devotion by NOMAD, which reached No.2 in the UK and No.1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart.
“I learned a long time ago that if you make the song great, the production’s easy.”
Steve Mac
Mac, real name Steve McCutcheon, then himself became a member of a dance act, Undercover. They recorded a version of Gerry Rafferty classic Baker Street, which went Top 5 hit in the UK and Germany in 1992.
From there, Mac began co-writing with Wayne Hector, with whom he penned huge pop ballads, often associated with recording artists signed to Simon Cowell.
Mac and Hector’s hits included Forever by Damage (1996), as well as Westlife’s Swear It Again (1999) and Flying Without Wings (1999), plus Beat Again by JLS (2009).
Mac has won awards including the 2020 Songwriter of the Year prize at the Ivor Novello Awards – the prestigious London-based annual awards for songwriters.
He also won an Ivor Novello in 2018 for Most Performed Work for Shape Of You, and has won a clutch of ASCAP Awards, plus both Songwriter of the Year and Producer of the Year gongs at the UK-focused A&R Awards, presented by Music Business Worldwide.
In September 2020, Mac revealed his 5 ‘Golden Rules of Songwriting’ via a piece on Music Business Worldwide. Within these golden rules, Mac said: “I learned a long time ago that if you make the song great, the production’s easy. I feel sorry for co-writers who are in with me sometimes, because I can get super-excited; in my head, I’m hearing how the track will sound at the end of the [production] process. And they’re just going, ‘How can this be “the one”, Steve? It’s just me and a piano.’”
He added: “Many times, I see a producer/writer go in [with an artist] and they’ll spend three hours working on drums, when they should be spending that time working on the song. If I have a co-writer or an artist come into the studio here, I will spend the whole day with them working on a chord progression, a melody and a lyric. It’s not a good use of time for them to be bored while I search for the right bass drum.”
Mac runs his own production and publishing company, Rokstone Music, whose works are administered under a deal with Universal Music Publishing Group.
He has previously held music publishing deals with companies such as BMG and peermusic.Music Business Worldwide