"Mark Ronson is involved. I like him a lot, I'm a big fan," he said. "The album is very different than what people would expect. It's colourful, uplifting, up-tempo stuff."

This, to put it mildly, was a bit of a shock. These days, producers are practically superstars in their own right and none is more feted than the dapper Ronson. He's stepped out with Quincy Jones's daughter Rashida, received a 'most stylish man' award from GQ magazine and single-handedly turned the tilted pork-pie hat into a fashion statement. And, of course, he masterminded Amy Winehouse's Valerie -- aka the song you couldn't escape if you ventured near a radio in 2007. What would a smooth operator with those impeccable credentials want with a wrinkly five-some best known for pouring FM treacle all over Cat Steven's Father and Son?

Not much, as it turns out. Upon hearing he'd been linked with Keating and company, Ronson was quick to respond via the modern celebrity's traditional method of communications -- a snarky Twitter post. In what can only be described as a stinging denial, he said, "I read I was working with the group Boyzone. Um, categorically untrue."

Why were Boyzone so eager to work with Ronson? Because, in the modern music industry, it is producers and other backroom operators who hold the keys to chart success, especially if you inhabit the fickle world of r&b and pop. Without Timbaland (above), there would be no Justin Timberlake (right) -- or at least no critically lauded, vaguely-okay-to-like Justin Timberlake. Without Dr Dre, Eminem might well still be a small-time street hustler in Detroit. And without The Neptunes -- who at one point had a hand in 43 per cent of music heard on US Top 40 radio -- artists such as Busta Rhymes, Usher and Kelis would never have had as profound an impact on urban culture.

"In terms of r&b, people like Timbaland and The Neptunes are as big if not bigger than the artist themselves," says Keith Downey of Irish electronica label Psychonavigation. "Sometimes it makes me wonder how involved the artist actually involved is in the creative process of making the track itself."

None of which is exactly new. Back in the 60s, songwriters at Motown and maverick producers such as Phil Spector were industry players in their own right. Not by coincidence did Carole King and Neil Diamond start out as behind-the-scene composers. Pop was a production line -- far from being the most important person in the room, the artist was often nothing more than a conduit for other peoples' musical visions.

Increasingly, that's the way things work today, too. Most famously, there are the aforementioned Timberland and The Neptunes, the alpha and omega of modern production (while Ronson may be famous in this part of the world, in the US he's basically seen as a party boy with an interesting record collection). But they're certainly not alone.

What, for instance, do Closer by Neo, Bye, Bye by Mariah Carey, or Beautiful Liar by Beyoncé and Shakira have in common? All were produced by Scandinavian hit-makers Stargate, aka Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel S Erikse. In January, the duo had four singles in the US top 20, for which they would go on to receive six Grammy nominations.

And Stargate is just one of many. Other up-and-coming production teams include Swedish duo Bloodshy & Avant (aka Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg), who were behind Britney Spears' fantastic Toxic (they worked with Samantha Mumba, too -- hey, nobody's perfect, right?). And it was another Swede, songwriter Max Martin, who arguably started the teen pop onslaught in 1998, when he hooked up with a then-unknown Spears to write and co-produce a sinfully catchy ditty ...Baby One More Time.

The interesting thing is that, unlike 80s bubblegum-merchants such as Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the modern pop producer isn't merely interested in shifting records -- though they certainly have no difficulty in achieving that. They also want to push boundaries, creating sounds that are as artistically challenging as they are sweet on the ear. Admit it: the first time you heard the Timbaland/Timberlake collaboration Sexy Back, you had absolutely no idea where the song was going.

"Listen to top-40 radio -- the production is nuts, totally psychedelic," says Benjamin Curtis of indie group School of Seven Bells. "The production on a Britney Spears track is insane. They're using every gimmick, to make every whoosh and crazy beat sound as out-there as possible. That sounds psychedelic to me."

Of course, it's not only in the pop world that the producer is basking in a new-found prominence. Look at the post-Suede career of British guitarist Bernard Butler. Last year he part-produced Duffy's (below) Rockferry (co-writing the title track for good measure), The Black Kids' Partie Traumatic; Duke Special's I Never Thought This Day Would Come and Tricky's Knowle West Boy, and is currently working with Kate Nash on her second LP. And when greying brit-pop icons the Manic Street Preachers and Jarvis Cocker required an infusion of credibility, they sought out Chicago studio-maverick Steve Albini.

"He's one of the strangest, most exciting and, at times genuinely perturbing people I've met," Manics' bassist Nicky Wire has said. "I really liked him and genuinely got on with him. I don't know if he'd say the same about me. He's pretty impenetrable. That didn't matter. What he brought was the academic discipline."

Indeed, for some up-and-coming musicians a producer's gig has turned out to be as lucrative and rewarding a career as actually being in a band. Though James Ford hit the UK top 10 with his group Simian Mobile Disco in 2007, so in demand is he as a producer, it's taken him all this time to get around to releasing a sequel. In the meantime, he's hooked up with Florence and the Machine, Arctic Monkeys and Klaxons. Who wouldn't want a day job like that?

"Every time you go into a studio to work with a group, it's different," he says. "From band to band, people have a totally different approach in terms of doing stuff. So it's always a learning curve," he says.

Still, it's important not to overstate the case. Being a successful producer may win you the respect of peers but, for many, that's a poor second to living it up like a proper rock star. For every indie geek such as Ford who prefers to be out of sight behind a mixing disk, there is a parade of producers who wish they were the ones on stage soaking up the glory. Which might explain why Timbaland, Ronson and The Neptunes' Pharrell Williams have all put their production gigs on the backburner to release solo records in the past 18 months.

"There's no other feeling like being on stage in front of 70,000 people," Williams said last year. "And they're all going crazy for your songs. It's kind of a high."