Britney Enlists Matrix
A friend once said to me, “If you can stick it out in this business
ten years, something extraordinary will happen to you,” says Lauren
Christy of the songwriting and production team the Matrix, a
voluptuous Brit with dyed-black hair and a warm laugh. “And then he
goes, ‘You’re right on time, you three.'”
As the Matrix, Christy and her two collaborators — her Scottish
husband, Graham Edwards, and St. Louis-born musician Scott Spock —
have gone from being modestly successful performers to hugely
in-demand hitmakers, thanks in large part to their work on Avril
Lavigne’s Let Go. All of Lavigne’s Number One singles,
“Complicated,” “Sk8er Boi” and “I’m With You,” were written with
the Matrix (who earn $50,000 per track and four percent of an
album’s sales). They recently wrote and recorded with Liz Phair and
Ricky Martin at their L.A. Studio, Decoy. Currently the trio is
working with Britney Spears on her next album.
Spock and Edwards had been playing in a band called DollsHead,
and Christy was recording as a solo artist when, in 1999, their
manager asked them to “knock out a song this weekend” for an
Australian band called Jackson Mendoza. The following weekend, they
wrote a tune for Christina Aguilera and realized they had found
themselves a new career.
For most of their collaborations, Christy writes melodies,
Edwards handles the arrangements and Spock acts as the producer.
Though Christy swears that “anyone can write a song,” she and her
cohorts are like mad professors of pop, using a combination of
instinct and science to pen dangerously catchy tunes.
“[When it happens] we get so excited,” says Christy. “We start
jumping around the room, like, ‘That’s a fucking hit! Why, I don’t
know, but it is!'”
They chose the name the Matrix after Spock noted that it means
“the womb” and “the rock from which everything comes.” No Doubt,
Coldplay, David Bowie and Michelle Branch are among the artists
that Matrix dreams of working with. “We’re not gonna put ourselves
on a box and say, ‘We do R&B,’ or ‘We do pop rock for
youngsters,'” says Christy. “We just want to do great songs.”