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No. 30
Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald
Songwriter/producer
Kemosabe Records/Sony
Twitter: @TheDoctorLuke
The Hitmaker Poised To Be The Next Jimmy Iovine…
A convincing case for Gottwald’s power could be made just by listing his smash hits: Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” Ke$ha’s “TiK ToK,” Britney Spears’ “Hold It Against Me,” Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” and Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” “Teenage Dream” and “I Kissed a Girl.” He was named Billboard’s No. 2 Hot 100 Songwriter of the last decade, despite not having a charting song until 2004, and the seeming effortlessness of his songs belies their complexity and fanatical focus. “He’s very anal about every sound on every record,” Universal Music Group head Barry Weiss (see No. 18) told Billboard in September 2010, and Gottwald is reputedly equally obsessive and encyclopedic about chart positions. Now Gottwald plans to spread his domination even further. Late last year, Sony Music CEO Doug Morris (No. 5), who has called Gottwald the next Jimmy Iovine (No. 10), announced that Gottwald’s Kemosabe imprint will become Sony’s fourth label division in a deal that also gives Sony exclusive rights to his production work for five years. Along with his thriving publishing interests, the move puts Gottwald in a position comparable to that of Iovine 20 years ago. “A hit song is the right song, with the right artist, at the right time,” Gottwald told New York magazine in 2010. His moves in 2011 put him in a position to control all three.
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