Toby Gad

Tobias "Toby" Gad (born 28 March 1968) is a German music producer and songwriter based in Los Angeles.

He is known for co-writing songs including John Legend's biggest hit, "All of Me", the fifth-highest certified single in RIAA history, and for co-writing and producing "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie and "If I Were a Boy" by Beyoncé.

Other notable works include "Skyscraper" for Demi Lovato, "Who You Are" for Jessie J, "Untouched" for The Veronicas, "A Year Without Rain" for Selena Gomez & the Scene, "Don't Hold Your Breath" for Nicole Scherzinger, "Love You More" for JLS, and "I Do" for Colbie Caillat.

Born into a musical family in Munich in 1968, Gad was influenced by both parents who were established figures in the Munich music scene with their group, The Jazz Kids.

His Danish father is a clarinet player and a pilot.

His German mother is a psychotherapist and composer/pianist who tours the UK and Europe with Brian Carrick's jazz band, the Algiers Stompers.

Gad was expected to study banjo and join the Jazz Kids, but he took to playing the piano instead.

At age 7, he and his brother Jens had formed their own band, the Gad Rollers, and played original rock'n'roll compositions during intermissions of their parents' gigs.

Although too young to get into most clubs at age 13, Toby and Jens were no strangers to the live music scene in Munich.

Weekly gigs in bars, concerts in open-air summer festivals and shows in legendary live clubs such as the Domicile spread the word, and Munich hit producer Tony Monn showed interest in the brothers.

Monn handed over his state-of-the-art recording studio to Toby and Jens whenever he was out of town.

Monn's generosity provided a learning environment for Toby and Jens to delve into songwriting and producing.

In 1986, when Frank Farian, a multi-platinum German producer (No Mercy, Boney M, Milli Vanilli) was looking for new talent, a mutual friend turned him on to the Gad brothers' material.

The next day, the boys flew to Frankfurt and thus started a seven-year collaboration with Farian.

One week later, they found three of their songs on Milli Vanilli's debut album, which later went multi-platinum.

Farian produced Toby and Jens' first album Q ' as artists', which was followed by a live tour.

Funk legend George Clinton would later hear the record and invited Toby and Jens to perform two songs on stage with his P-funk band.

In 1990, Toby Gad met Mauritian singer Jacqueline Nemorin.

This became the beginning of a 10-year collaboration between the two.

Together with Farian, Gad produced Nemorin's first album The Creole Dance on BMG.

In 1994, Gad signed on with manager Klaus Frers (Daydream Music Supervizing) and produced Nemorin's second album for EMI Europe.

It was also Frers who moved the duo into music production for dozens of successful TV shows, commercials and movie soundtracks.

Gad and Nemorin wrote and produced the title-song for the movie Neverending Story III, the music for two popular daily TV talk-shows that stayed on air for four years, and the single "The Magic of the Fall", which went on to win the BDA Gold Award in L.A. for best TV trailer concept.

In 1998, Gad was hired by Spanish producer Rafael Perez to work on Enrique Iglesias' third album.

That same year, Gad signed a deal with Joost Van Os, former head of Polygram.

Following much success in his home country, Gad relocated to New York City, opening Strawberrybee studio in Midtown Manhattan.

"Damn I Think I Love You" stayed at #1 for seven weeks and became the most sold single of 2001 in the Netherlands.

The #1 StarMaker album with two of Gad's songs went triple platinum.

Sita's debut single "Happy" was at #1 for two weeks and remained in the top five for two months.

The song was also released in the US on the Wild Thornberries soundtrack, followed by the #1 album of Sita.

After 3 years in New York without any success, Gad was given the chance to work with MTV host Willa Ford.

Their single "A Toast to Men" became a #40 radio single, appearing in the hit movie Barbershop 2.

Gad, with David and William Derella from DAS, worked out a co-publishing deal with Cherrylane Music Publishing and record deals for several of Gad's artists.

The album title song and hit single "Unspoken" of Christian platinum artist Jaci Velasquez, written by Gad, Madeline Stone and O.Hatch, managed to stay half a year in the Christian Billboard top 20 single charts and was re-released on the Billboard #2 album, WOW Greatest Hits 2004.

Meanwhile, Gad had several successes back overseas.

In August 2005, Interscope Records released Texan teen Kaci Brown's album Instigator, entirely developed, produced and co-written by Gad.

R&B group Fatty Koo has an album on Columbia Records on which every song is produced and co-written by Toby.

He produced and co-wrote songs on the album of the Australian twins The Veronicas, who scored the biggest US newcomer record deal of the year on Warner Bros. Records/Sire Records and went double platinum in Australia.

Meleni and Gad co-wrote the song "Drop It On Me" on Ricky Martin's 2005 album Life.

In the third quarter of 2014, Gad was ranked the #3 songwriter in America by Billboard, behind Ryan Tedder and Pharrell Williams.