Sweden has long been a hotbed in the world of pop music. With ABBA leading the way, the Scandinavian country has produced some of the best acts in the history of this genre. In the Nineties, Ace of Base took the world by storm with their reggae-pop fusion. The early 2010s EDM boom also carried the Swedish signature – artists like Avicii and Swedish House Mafia infused pop elements into their tracks, helping to bring EDM squarely into the mainstream. Yet, if there is one individual who has consistently shaped the global pop music scene over the past three decades, it is a Swede you might not know, but whose songs you certainly do: the super producer and songwriter Max Martin.
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Max Martin
Martin is nothing short of a hit-making machine: Since the early days of his career, he has been a near-constant presence on the Billboard Hot 100. The sheer range of artists he has worked with is staggering, and while many associate him with stars like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, and the Backstreet Boys, his talent stretches far beyond that, including works with Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Cyndi Lauper, Celine Dion, Kelly Clarkson, and Ke$ha, to name a few. And that’s only as a songwriter. As a producer, his credits are even more extensive.
His story began in Stenhamra, just outside Stockholm. As a child, he played in metal bands, and at the age of fourteen, he joined the glam rock group It’s Alive as the lead singer. He was so passionate about music that he soon dropped out of school to pursue it full-time. The band gained some notoriety and eventually caught the attention of Swedish producer Denniz PoP. This led to a contract with PoP’s label, allowing Martin to join the production team. Before long, he was in the studio helping Ace of Base create their sophomore and platinum album, The Bridge in 1995.
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Taking Off
The same year, his career skyrocketed when he began working with the Backstreet Boys, earning a writing credit on the boy band’s platinum hit Quit Playing Games (With My Heart).“Max and Dennis were responsible for the whole birth of Backstreet Boys, of our sound”, said AJ McLean and Brian Littrell, two of the group’s five lead singers during an interview with Popular Music Prize. “I think even kind of helping us find ourselves within our image, within whatever encompassed the Backstreet Boys was Max and Dennis”.
At the time, the Backstreet Boys were signed to Jive Records, the same label that had recently brought on board a young artist named Britney Spears in 1997. The company was searching for a songwriter to help her launch her career and immediately knew whom to recruit. Martin had already written a song that he was holding onto; he first offered it to TLC and the Backstreet Boys, but after both rejected it, he believed that Britney would be the perfect fit for it. That song was …Baby One More Time, and when it was released in 1998, it became his first number-one hit.
The Early 2000s
Ever since, he has been in high demand, consistently delivering a steady stream of hits as a writer and producer. In 2000, he achieved his second number-one hit with NSYNC’s It’s Gonna Be Me. By 2001, he was already so successful that even music mogul Simon Cowell remarked to Time Magazine, “If you’ve got Max Martin as your writer, you have a better chance of having a worldwide hit than with anyone else”.
However, 2008 marked a major turning point in his career. He began working with Katy Perry and co-wrote, “I Kissed a Girl”, which became his third number-one hit. From that point on, his career soared with a string of chart-toppers, including “California Gurls” and “Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry, “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift, “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” by Justin Timberlake and the more recent “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, among many others. As of this writing, he has written the second-most number-one singles on the chart, behind only Paul McCartney (32).
X – & Juliet UK
Songwriting
Given his immense success, what’s behind Martin’s approach to songwriting? One of the key lessons learned from Denniz PoP was that a hit song has to grab you in the first few seconds. The opening needs to be instantly recognizable—unique, catchy, or powerful enough for listeners to identify immediately. As he explained during an interview: “We had this philosophy because [Denniz] came from the DJ world. To keep people on the floor when you changed the song, you couldn’t be like, ‘What’s this?’ It had to be something they recognized from the very start”. This approach is clear in …Baby One More Time and many of his other hits, which you can recognize probably in less than three seconds.
Another feature of Martin’s success is simplicity. As Adam Levine from Maroon 5 once put it during an interview with Popular Music Prize: “I think Max’s secret is probably something along the lines of ‘the simplest, most effective thing is always the best’”. He consistently emphasizes the importance of keeping it simple; the goal is to create music that everyone can enjoy, and he has mastered the art of doing just that.
Staying Out of the Limelight
And this leads to the main question: If Max Martin is such a genius, surrounded by so many music celebrities, why haven’t you ever heard of him?
The answer is simple: Martin is famously media-shy. “You did it, you blew my cover”, he joked while receiving the Polar Music Prize 2016. “I managed to hide between two speakers in a basement for over 20 years, and then you did this—thanks a lot”.
He rarely gives interviews, avoids the spotlight, and hardly attends music industry events. He doesn’t even use social media; he prefers to spend his time in the studio, crafting and producing hits. This has been his modus operandi since his career took off in the mid-90s, which is why he remains relatively unknown to the average music listener. Perhaps more importantly though, Martin is scared of fame. While working on the 2019 musical “& Juliet”, he said to the New York Times, “I’ve always been scared of fame. I’ve seen it up close, and I don’t think it’s healthy”. Well, it makes perfect sense for someone who is constantly interacting with famous people and witnessing the pressures they face.
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Being an Artist was Likely not Martin’s First Aspiration…
Rather, he is a songwriter and producer who has truly mastered his craft. He loves what he does, cares little for fame, and focuses on creating exceptional music designed to forge an immediate connection between the listener and the song. In this way, he has shown, more than anyone else, that pop music transcends trends, focusing instead on universal melodic structures that resonate with the human psyche. It’s no surprise that his work has even become the subject of numerous PhD studies in psychology.
This formula has allowed Martin to adapt to over three decades of musical evolution, collaborating with artists ranging from the Backstreet Boys to Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and The Weeknd. Regardless of shifting public tastes, his songs consistently sound engaging, and as we look to the future of pop music, one thing is certain: Max Martin’s fingerprints will be all over it.
If you’re an aspiring artist, musician, producer, or singer and would like to submit your music demo to Funktasy Records, you can do so by visiting our Demo Submission page.
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