Photo by Emma-Lee Photography
Karen Kosowski is a versatile multi-genre writer and producer based in Nashville, TN. Raised on a wide variety of pop, rock, classical and country music in the Canadian prairie city of Winnipeg, in the early 2000’s she packed up her car and drove herself, her instruments and her recording gear to Toronto where she spent many years creating both pop and country music before following her heart and relocating her studio to Nashville, Tennessee. With her formal musical training, traditional songwriting background, multi-instrumentalist abilities, varied influences and two decades of producing, pop programming and engineering skills, she is a virtual Swiss army knife in both the writing room and recording studio. As such, she has contributed to a wide resume of hits - sometimes as a producer, sometimes as a writer, sometimes as a mixer, and sometimes all three at once.
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Karen produced the majority of Mickey Guyton’s 3x Grammy nominated album “Remember Her Name” (Capitol Records Nashville), and is a co-writer on several of the album’s tracks. The album received a 2022 Grammy nomination for “Best Country Album”, and the title track (one of nine that Karen produced) was nominated for “Best Country Solo Performance” and “Best Country Song”. She also mixed two of the album’s tracks, including the critically acclaimed “What Are You Gonna Tell Her”. The album has received massive critical praise and was hailed by NPR as “one of the standout country-pop works of the modern era”.
Previously Karen produced and co-wrote several tracks on Guyton’s “Bridges” EP (Capitol Records Nashville), which was hailed as one of the top country albums of 2020 by Billboard Magazine, American Songwriter Magazine and many more. Karen continues to collaborate on a variety of recording projects with Mickey as both producer and co-writer, including producing and mixing “Black Like Me (Our Voices)”, which Mickey performed at the 2021 Grammy Awards, and producing a cover of “Nothing Else Matters” for Metallica’s “The Metallica Blacklist” album. For Mickey’s performance of the Star Spangled Banner at Super Bowl LVI, Karen arranged the instrumentation and choir, and played piano in the final performance. She has accompanied Mickey on stage for many special occasions, including performances on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon”, the 2021 American Music Awards, and the 2021 Grammy Awards.
Other recent highlights include co-writing the Gold Certified, #1 Canadian and Australian country single “What A Song Should Do” for Tim Hicks, co-writing the Platinum certified single "She Drives Me Crazy" and Gold certified single "Anthem" for Brett Kissel, and producing, mixing and co-writing the six-week #1 Australian Country Single “Memphis T-Shirt” for Melanie Dyer (Universal Music Australia). She produced and co-wrote the Gold Certified, #2 Canadian Country Single "Country Thunder" for the Washboard Union (for which she received a nomination for "Producer Of The Year" at the 2020 Canadian Country Music Awards), and went on to produce 6 tracks on their new album "Everbound", which won the 2020 CCMA award for "Roots Album Of The Year". Karen produced/co-wrote/mixed the single "Home To Me" for Sony Nashville recording artist Ross Ellis, which charted top 10 on Sirius XM's The Highway, and produced/co-wrote Ryan Langdon's swagger-filled new EP "Lit In The Sticks" (Hidden Pony Records).
While her recent work has been primarily focused in the country music genre, pop music is close to Karen’s heart, and she produced/co-wrote the US Top 40 pop hit “Somebody To Love Me” for Tryon, and produced/mixed/co-wrote the Billboard AC Radio Top 5 “It Won’t Be Christmas” for Emma-Lee, which has become a perennial radio favorite in Canada, topping the recurrent charts every Christmas season since it’s release.
Karen loves collaborating on original tracks for feature films. “Hold On” (co-written with and produced/mixed for Mickey Guyton), was created specially for a heartbreaking scene in the Oscar-nominated movie “Breakthrough”, and “Where The Light Used To Be” (co-written with and produced/mixed for Peter Katz) was created for another emotional wrought scene, this time in Wangofilms’ action movie “88” (starring Christopher Lloyd), and it garnered her a 2016 Canadian Screen Awards nomination in the category of Achievement in Music - Best Original Song. She also produced/mixed “Without A Net”, a newly-written song by Diane Warren performed by Mickey Guyton, for the 2020 feature film “Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story”.
Licensing inquiries please contact synnovea.cleveland@sonymusicpub.com and production inquiries contact karen@karenkosowski.com