Stephen Street

Stephen Brian Street (born 29 March 1960 in Hackney, London ) is an English music producer best known for his work with the Smiths, the Cranberries and Blur.

Street collaborated with Morrissey on his debut album Viva Hate following the split of the Smiths.

More recently he has worked with Kaiser Chiefs, Babyshambles and the Courteeners.

For a time, he was managed by Gail Colson's company Gailforce Management.

Street began his musical career in the late 1970s playing in various bands around London.

He played bass in the new wave ska/pop group, Bim, with future Neneh Cherry/Massive Attack producer Cameron McVey.

The band were featured in the Listen to London documentary film.

Street started at Island Records' Fallout Shelter Studio in 1982 firstly as an "in-house assistant" and then as an "in-house engineer".

One of Street's first jobs as in-house engineer was for a session for the Smiths's "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" and commented in a HitQuarters interview, "I'd seen them just shortly beforehand on Top of the Pops doing "This Charming Man", and like most other people around that time who were into music I was really excited by them."

Although Street didn't work on the subsequent recording "William, It Was Really Nothing", he was asked to engineer their next album, Meat Is Murder, with Morrissey and Marr producing for the first time.

During this time, he engineered for reggae artists including Black Uhuru and Linton Kwesi Johnson, and for jùjú musician King Sunny Adé.

He helped produce and mix several tracks on Stephen Duffy's first two albums: The Ups and the Downs in 1985 and Because We Love You in 1986.

In 1992, Street started working with Irish band the Cranberries on their debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?.

The album turned out to be a huge success in the US.

In 1994, Street worked with the band again on their second album No Need to Argue.

Twelve years later, he worked with Duffy on his 1998 album I Love My Friends.

Street continued to work with the Smiths, working as an engineer on their album The Queen Is Dead before assuming a producer role for Strangeways, Here We Come, their final album.

After the Smiths broke up, Street was producer and co-songwriter for Morrissey's debut solo album Viva Hate, which reached No. 1, spawning two top 10 hits in the UK.

Street and Vini Reilly, guitarist on Viva Hate, had a dispute over songwriting credits.

Reilly claimed to have written the majority of the tracks on the album, which Street dismissed, claiming that he wrote the music for all of the tracks on the album and that Reilly had no part to play in that.

Street was credited as producer, songwriter, guitarist and bass guitarist on the album.

Street went on to co-write and produce two further singles for Morrissey which appeared on Bona Drag before the singer ended their association, apparently due to disputes regarding royalty payments and alleged conversations between Street and Johnny Rogan, author of controversial Morrissey texts.

After hearing "She's So High", Blur's first single, Street contacted their manager.

Soon after he produced their second single "There's No Other Way", although he did not produce the album as a whole.

Street produced Blur's next four albums: Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape and Blur.

Following two albums with different producers, the band worked with Street again on their 2001 album Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and the two extra tracks that were recorded for their 2002 best of album Stars: "Stars" and "New New York".

After the Cranberries went on hiatus in 2003, guitarist Noel Hogan began working on solo work then called Mono Band.

Following Graham Coxon's departure from Blur, Street produced the guitarist's next album Happiness in Magazines, released May 2004, plus follow-up albums Love Travels at Illegal Speeds in March 2006 and The Spinning Top in May 2009.

Street also produced the first two albums for ska-influenced indie band the Ordinary Boys: Over the Counter Culture in 2004 and Brassbound in 2005.

Street produced Shotter's Nation, the second album by Pete Doherty's band Babyshambles.

The recording of the album was said to have been a hard process, due to Street's lack of co-operation with Pete Doherty.

Street worked with Hogan in producing the album of the same name released in 2005.

Street also produced the Cranberries' sixth studio album Roses, released in 2012.

Street produced Blur's 2015 album The Magic Whip, their first since the band's reformation with Coxon.

He also produced their final album In the End, released in 2019.

Street produced Employment, the debut album by Kaiser Chiefs, after hearing one of their early demos and contacted the band about producing them.

At one point, Street brought Blur guitarist Graham Coxon into the studio to rev his moped for a sound effect.

This can be heard on the track "Saturday Night".

Street produced the band's second album Yours Truly, Angry Mob.

In February 2020, Street received the award for Outstanding Contribution to UK Music at the Music Producer's Guild Awards.