Mark Ronson told me the story behind his go-to Royal Oak before christening AP House with new single “Too Much”
Zach BlassEver since I had heard they were opening a new space, I was itching to see the new AP House in New York City. It is not open to the public just yet, but I was invited to swing by to get an early taste of the Audemars Piguet space. To just visit and get a sneak peek of it would have been enough, but what made my first visit über exciting was the fact I got the chance to sit down with renowned musician, producer, and creative genius Mark Ronson along with Grammy award-winning singer Lucky Daye.
I am getting ahead of myself though, let’s take a step back. You would think such an invitation would coincide with a new novelty, and to an extent it did. But it was not a watch – it was a new song. Audemars Piguet has long been involved with sponsoring music programs but, for the first time, the legendary Swiss manufacture co-produced a song with their two newly minted ambassadors as part of their new Synching Sounds series. The three episode series peels back the curtain and allows viewers to see the full creative process – watching veteran producer Mark Ronson and rising superstar Lucky Daye create a song from scratch together, which was debuted and performed in the new AP House later in the evening.
Before Mark’s hour-long DJ set, and the performance of the new single Too Much, I joined the other journalists to sit down with Mark, Lucky, François-Henry Bennahmias (CEO of Audemars Piguet) and Michael Friedman (Head of Complications) to dig into the collaboration. François made it abundantly clear from the outset that AP was very hands-off in the production of the song, they simply wanted to bring these two musicians together and give them the freedom to create and do what they do best. That being said, François also stressed that anything AP creates does not aim to be merely “good” – they always aim for “great”. He certainly has his eyes set on a Grammy and millions of streams for the new single.
As intriguing as it was to get a deeper sense of the musical collaboration, at the end of the day I am a shameless watch geek. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to briefly hit pause on the music discussion and ask Mark about his go-to 36mm Royal Oak in yellow gold and the story behind him buying it.
“I was in a bar in Paris and there was this guy in this cool leather jacket who looked like sort of like Serge Gainsbourg – just French and impossibly cool and he had the watch. I walked over to him and I just asked him in my terrible butchered French like “excuse moi” or whatever and he showed me the watch. I had heard about Audemars Piguet, of course, but this I had to put in my phone. Then I spoke to a friend of mine when I got back, Verushka from Material Good, I don’t think they’d opened yet, and I was like: “I need to track down this watch”. She took a little while and then she found it, but it was just so exciting ’cause it was like a treasure hunt in its own way. This is probably 10 years ago.”
It is definitely not the craziest watch hunt story in the world. In fact, it is a rather common occurrence – but that’s what I love about it. It is very relatable in terms of spotting a watch in the wild, striking up a conversation, and snapping a pic so you can start hunting for it. Just goes to show that even when you’re a world-famous celebrity, watches can be a sort of equaliser – at all levels of collecting we all share a common passion and experience.
Once the conversation ended, we returned to AP House. It was definitely a full house, with Offset, Marky Ramone, Puja Patel, Mark Anthony Green, Wisdom Kaye, Kristen Noel Crawley and Don C, Vashtie Kola, Tim Birkin “Bloody Osiris”, Nigel Sylvester, Alexandra Richards and Jacques Naude, Zack Bia, Jon Gray, Yebba, Chantel Jeffries, and more in attendance to support Mark, Lucky, and the Maison.
For an hour, Mark took us on a musical journey with his set – blending past and present bangers that got everybody dancing. But as Mark acknowledged, it was ultimately a warm up to get everybody ready to finally hear him and Lucky perform Too Much. The duo definitely delivered. Upon first hearing it, the song clearly had a timeless quality to it that can be appreciated across generations of taste and sound.
To check out the new song for yourself, as well as help Mark and Lucky hit the streaming benchmarks set by François, you can listen to Too Much below.