Quick quiz: who is the most successful songwriter of the last thirty years? If you said anyone’s name other than Max Martin, sit down, because we need to talk about a soft-spoken man from Stenhamra, Sweden, who has quietly written the soundtrack to your entire life.
The Cheiron years
Born Karl Martin Sandberg in 1971, Martin started out in a glam-metal band before being pulled into Stockholm’s Cheiron Studios by the legendary producer Denniz Pop. When Denniz Pop died in 1998, Martin inherited the hit factory, and what followed was absurd.
“…Baby One More Time.” That was him, written for Britney Spears in 1998, the song that launched a thousand pop careers and one actual pop career. Then “I Want It That Way” for the Backstreet Boys. “It’s Gonna Be Me” and “Bye Bye Bye” for NSYNC. “Oops!… I Did It Again.” By the time the millennium turned, Max Martin had essentially invented the sound of turn-of-the-century pop, all from a studio in Stockholm.
The second act nobody saw coming
Most hitmakers fade. Martin leveled up. In the 2000s he gave Kelly Clarkson “Since U Been Gone,” the song that taught rock radio to love pop hooks. In the 2010s he became the secret weapon behind Katy Perry’s imperial phase (“I Kissed a Girl,” “California Gurls,” “Teenage Dream,” “Roar”), Taylor Swift’s pop coronation (“We Are Never Ever Getting Younger”… sorry, “22,” plus “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood”), and Ariana Grande’s ascent (“Problem,” “Break Free,” “Into You,” “No Tears Left to Cry”).
Then came The Weeknd. “Can’t Feel My Face,” “In the Night,” and later “Blinding Lights” and “Save Your Tears,” songs Martin co-wrote and co-produced that turned Abel Tesfaye into the biggest pop star on the planet. “Blinding Lights” became one of the biggest songs in chart history, full stop.
The tally now stands at more than two dozen Billboard Hot 100 number ones as a songwriter, the most of any songwriter in history after Lennon and McCartney. He has been named ASCAP’s Songwriter of the Year more times than anyone cares to count, and he received Sweden’s Polar Music Prize in 2016.
How he does it
Martin’s genius is not a trick; it is a discipline. He is famous for “melodic math,” the idea that a pop melody should be constructed as carefully as architecture, with every syllable earning its place. He writes for the listener’s subconscious: the reason you cannot get the chorus out of your head is that he put it there on purpose.
He also builds songwriters the way other producers build studios. His MXM Studios in Stockholm has been a finishing school for a generation of Swedish hitmakers: Shellback (his longtime right hand, co-writer on half the modern pop canon), Savan Kotecha (One Direction, Ariana Grande), Oscar Holter. The Swedish pop machine is, to a remarkable degree, the Max Martin machine.
Why you have never heard of him
Here is the best part: Martin almost never gives interviews, does not do red carpets, and has no interest in fame. In an industry built on personality, the most successful pop songwriter alive is a ghost. Robyn, no less, reunited with him this year for “Talk To Me” on her Sexistential album, their first collaboration since 2010, and even that barely made a ripple in the celebrity press.
That is the Max Martin paradox. He is everywhere and nowhere. Every era of pop for the last three decades has his fingerprints on it, and he would still get a table at a restaurant without a reservation. The hits are the fame. The man just makes them.
