Mark Ronson

Of his ten planets, four sit in fire signs and four in air, with one each in earth and water. Fire starts things and air arranges them; the elements that would ground any of it or feel its way through are down to a single planet each. Ronson is an English producer, which is the trade of making somebody else's record sound like itself, and the record names an Oscar for a song from A Star Is Born.

The Sun sits at eleven degrees of Virgo and the Moon at twenty two of Leo, the sign that corrects everything it hears answering to the sign that wants the room. Mercury, Uranus and Pluto group across twenty three degrees of Libra behind them. A producer credited by name on other people's records has to run both of those at once, and the chart puts them in adjacent signs rather than resolving them.

Two T-squares run through this chart. One holds the Sun, Mars and Neptune, the other Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, so both the personal and the heavy end of the chart are braced without an outlet. Jupiter stands at a strained angle to Neptune seven hundredths of a degree off exact, the tightest contact here. The Sun sits square Mars at three quarters. Venus and Jupiter were the two retrograde planets. In a producer, a chart braced at both ends with nowhere to put the strain is the condition of the job, which is somebody else’s record and everybody’s deadline.

Jupiter came the whole way round to its Aries starting point on 21 April 2023, at forty seven, in reverse as it was originally. Aries is only ever asking what began rather than what became of it, and three laps precede it. The award the record names arrived inside the most recent, which is late enough in a producer's career to count as recognition rather than arrival. Venus retrograde in the last degree of Leo is the detail that fits a man whose taste is his instrument and who spends it on other people's records.