Mark Bright (music producer)

Mark David Bright (born December 22, 1959) is an American country music producer, songwriter, and publishing company executive based in Nashville. His peers call Bright "one of the architects of the modern contemporary country sound". Bright's most noted success in producing records has been with the country acts BlackHawk, Rascal Flatts, and Carrie Underwood, but he has produced recordings for many artists including Reba McEntire, Sara Evans, Scotty McCreery, Lonestar, Peter Cetera, Brad Paisley, Luke Bryan, and Keith Urban

Bright's entry job in the music industry was in 1993 working as tape-splicer for Screen Gems/EMI Publishing in Nashville. Over the next 12 years he worked his way up to vice-president of the company. Arista Records president Tim DuBois gave Bright his first producing job with the band BlackHawk, which resulted in multi-platinum sales and spawned 13 additional albums produced by Bright, yielding album sales of over four million. Despite this success, Bright was not able to duplicate it in subsequent projects and was eventually terminated from EMI. After his departure, he was approached by EMI's competitor at the time, Sony/ATV, who offered him a joint venture in publishing, production and management. The new company, named "Teracel", prospered in its first year due in large measure to Bright's signing of songwriter Brett James, who created many commercially successful songs for various country artists.

In 1999, Bright heard three musicians who were performing in a bar in Nashville's Printer's Alley and thought their vocal harmonies had promise. The group, nameless at the time, was signed to a production and management deal and a recording contract by Bright, who developed them into the enormously successful trio "Rascal Flatts". Their first seven albums reached platinum sales and they eventually sold over 20 million albums.