Album Of The Week: Mark Ronson Uptown Special

There are very few pop stars with backstories as epic and strange as that of Mark Ronson. Where do you start with this guy? Son of a real estate mogul. Stepson of the guitarist from Foreigner. Brother of Samantha Ronson, the DJ who famously dated Lindsay Lohan when she was in her extreme tabloid-bait phase. Supposedly co-wrote the Thundercats theme song (presumably the "Thunder-Thunder-Thunder-Thunder-Cats!" part) when he was eight years old. As a DJ, became enough of a staple on New York's rap scene that Jay-Z shouted him out on the catchiest deep cut from Vol. 3. Threw Jack White and Freeway on a track together on his debut album, which was not the sort of thing people were doing in 2003. Was briefly engaged to Rashida Jones. Co-produced Amy Winehouse's Back To Black. That's a life! But despite all that, Ronson's never been exactly what you'd call a famous person, at least not on this side of the Atlantic. Part of that is simply because he doesn't sing. But also, he's also a born studio rat, the type of background figure who spends days laboring over chord changes but who doesn't necessarily command all the attention when he walks into a room. And that insular sense of music-nerd vision isn't just what led Ronson to make the new Uptown Special, his fourth album as a solo artist and easily his best. It's what's leading him to become, in some sense, a full-on pop star right now.