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Max Martin

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Max Martin was born in 1971 as Karl Martin Sandberg in Sweden and grew up in Stenhamra, close to Stockholm. He is a songwriter and producer, not an artist on stage. Even so, he co-wrote more number 1 hits in the American Billboard Hot 100 than anyone except Paul McCartney. In March 2024, with his twenty-seventh number 1, he caught up with John Lennon.

Music and breakthrough

In the 1980s he sang in the Swedish glam metal band It's Alive. In 1993 the producer Denniz PoP brought him to the Cheiron Studio in Stockholm, where a group of young writers and producers made hits. Denniz PoP also gave him his artist name. After PoP's death in 1998 Martin became the leader of the studio. From Stockholm came the hits of a new generation of American teen stars: ...Baby One More Time (1998) by Britney Spears, I Want It That Way (1999) by the Backstreet Boys and It's Gonna Be Me (2000) by *NSYNC. Cheiron closed in 2000. Martin continued with a studio of his own and wrote and produced for Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and Taylor Swift. With Swift and Shellback he made Shake It Off (2014). Blinding Lights (2019) by The Weeknd, which he co-wrote, is regarded as the most successful song in the history of the Hot 100.

Influence

Martin works like the hit factories before him: Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Motown and Stock Aitken Waterman. A team makes the music, and the singer drops by to sing in their part. His colleague Savan Kotecha summed up his method: melody first. The lyrics mainly have to sound good.

Listening

Listening tip. There is no excerpt under Max Martin's own name; listen to I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys, which he wrote with Andreas Carlsson. Notice how the hook ends on the word 'way', an open 'ay' sound that the singers can hold for a long time. A vowel like that sings well, even though, according to the group themselves, the lyrics do not quite make sense.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Mentioned in other articles

See also

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (en): Max Martin
  2. Wikipedia (en): Shake It Off
  3. Wikipedia (en): I Want It That Way
Categories: ArtistsStockholm pop (Max Martin)K-pop