{"id":1186005,"date":"2026-01-08T11:41:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/?p=1186005"},"modified":"2026-01-08T12:57:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:57:53","slug":"drive-blake-slatkin-ed-sheeran-john-mayer-fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/drive-blake-slatkin-ed-sheeran-john-mayer-fi\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Drive&#8217; Producer Blake Slatkin on Making the F1 Anthem With Musical Idols Ed Sheeran and John Mayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"iframe-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;Drive&quot; Producer Blake Slatkin on Teaming Up With Ed Sheeran and John Mayer for the F1 Rock Anthem\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hjP8iWnI7Og?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Blake Slatkin started performing Ed Sheeran and John Mayer songs on his guitar as a 10-year-old. Now he&#8217;s in the Oscar conversation for &#8220;Drive,&#8221; a song he recorded with Sheeran and Mayer for the soundtrack of Apple&#8217;s Brad Pitt racing drama <em>F1<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His advice for people who want to be musicians for a living? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Just be a fan. Be the biggest fan of music, be a lover of music, and work harder than anyone,&#8221; he says in an interview you can see above or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hjP8iWnI7Og\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">watch here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The best advice I was ever given was by my mentor, and he said, &#8216;You have to think of your career like a snowball, and you just keep packing on and packing on and packing on. And eventually it&#8217;s big enough that it just has to roll down the hill.'&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That mentor was record producer Benny Blanco, for whom Slatkin worked as an intern before becoming one of music&#8217;s most successful producers himself. He didn&#8217;t play Blanco his music for four years, because he wanted to make sure it was good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">&#8216;Drive&#8217; Producer Blake Slatkin on What a Record Producer Does<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Slatkin, who grew up in Los Angeles, started out as a fan himself \u2014 with aspirations to be more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I just wanted to be a rock star. And honestly, it was Ed and John and their music, who made me pick up a guitar in the first place. They both inspired me, and I used to cover their songs, and I learned guitar by copying them. &#8230; I used to play on stage and sell tickets to my friends, my teachers and stuff, and do little gigs around town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;And then when I found out what a producer was, and I found out that there are people making all of my favorite music that I didn&#8217;t even know about, and they were behind the scenes, and they could, like, switch genres and do this for years and years \u2014 the second I even found out what that was, it was like, &#8216;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m gonna do.&#8217; There&#8217;s never anything else I wanted to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being a producer has worked out very well for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Slatkin&#8217;s collaborators have included Justin Bieber, Lizzo, Lil NAS X, Gracie Abrams, Omer Fedi, 24kGldn, The Kid Laroi and many more. He won a Record of the Year Grammy for Lizzo\u2019s <em>About Damn Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For &#8220;Drive,&#8221; Slatkin assembled and played in a supergroup for the song that also included Dave Grohl on drums, Pino Palladino on bass and Rami Jaffee on keys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Slatkin says the role of a record producer is simply &#8220;to make sure that the best song possible happens, by any means necessary to get there \u2014 whether that&#8217;s by assembling the right group of people, whether that&#8217;s doing it yourself, whether that&#8217;s being a therapist to an artist and having a conversation so meaningful that they end up writing a perfect song all themselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He adds: &#8220;It&#8217;s completely different with every artist I work with. And that&#8217;s why I love my job, is because no day is the same,&#8221; he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Blake Slatkin on Making &#8216;Drive&#8217; for <em>F1 <\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Making <em>Drive<\/em> started with just getting Sheeran and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/john-mayer-walt-grace-submarine-test-january-1967-movie\/\">Mayer,<\/a> longtime friends, into a room together. Their first efforts were pretty similar to what ended up on the record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Ed said, &#8216;John, give me a rock riff.&#8217; The first thing John played on guitar was that riff,&#8221; says Slatkin. &#8220;Then the first thing Ed sang into the little scratch microphone was the verse, and then he went into the hook, and and that&#8217;s the demo that we came away with, with just the melodies and some scratch lyrics. Later, Ed and I finished the lyrics. John and I worked on the production.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The song closes out <em>F1<\/em>, and it&#8217;s a clean, exhilarating anthem that feels like a wave of release and a fresh start, packed with promise and adrenaline. You can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Cf1hKtrA9lg&amp;list=RDCf1hKtrA9lg&amp;start_radio=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">listen to it here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I try the hardest to make it sound like we don&#8217;t try hard,&#8221; Slatkin says. &#8220;That&#8217;s the biggest thing  \u2014 making it seem like it&#8217;s like a magic trick&#8230;. making it seem so effortless and like everything just happens when you want it to. But getting to that point is hard. It&#8217;s work.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Main image: <\/em>Blake Slatkin. <em>MovieMaker.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blake Slatkin started performing Ed Sheeran and John Mayer songs on his guitar as a 10-year-old. Now he&#8217;s in the","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":1186008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_comments":false,"cm_data":"","cpt_newsletter_id":0,"tpd_coauthor":[],"tpd_feed_delay":{"delay_type":"default"},"is_tpd_lists_single_post":false,"tpd_featured_posts_arr":"","tpd_franchise_content":"","hide_featured_img_single_post":false,"msn_featured_video":[],"_msn_custom_title":"","tpd_featured_video":[],"tpd_sponsored_post_logo":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_link":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_width":0,"tpd_sponsored_enable_nofollow":true,"tpd_disable_incontent_ads":false,"tpd_disable_right_rail_ads":false,"tpd_disable_after_content_ads":false,"tpd_disable_header_ads":false,"tpd_disable_sticky_footer_ads":false,"tpd_disable_video_ads":false,"tpd_disable_outbrain":false,"tpd_affiliate_disclaimer":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[41543],"tags":[42211,4165,42212,42213,38677],"coauthor":[],"feeds":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1186005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interview","8":"tag-blake-slatkin","9":"tag-drive","10":"tag-ed-sheeran","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-john-mayer"},"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Ed-Sheeran-Blake-Slatkin-Drive-John-Mayer-428x241.jpg","fimg_url_thumb":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Ed-Sheeran-Blake-Slatkin-Drive-John-Mayer-428x241.jpg","fimg_url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Ed-Sheeran-Blake-Slatkin-Drive-John-Mayer-788x444.jpg","author_name":"Tim Molloy","author_avatar":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/IMG_1078-100x100.jpg","author_link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/author\/tim-molloy\/","coauthors":[],"primary_category":{"term_id":41543,"name":"Interview","slug":"interview","taxonomy":"category","url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/category\/interview\/"},"featured_img_medium":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Ed-Sheeran-Blake-Slatkin-Drive-John-Mayer-788x444.jpg","post_categories":["Interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1186008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186005"},{"taxonomy":"coauthor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthor?post=1186005"},{"taxonomy":"feeds","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feeds?post=1186005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}