Martin Karl "Max Martin" Sandberg (born February 26, 1971) is an ASCAP-awarded and Grammy-nominated,[1] Swedish music producer and songwriter. He was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and is best known by his pen name Max Martin. Breaking through as a producer and songwriter in the mid 1990s, he has crafted a string of worldwide hits for pop artists like the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Britney Spears, and Pink among many others.
His trademark during the second half of the 1990s was a danceable, piano/synth-laden pop sound that blended music styles such as funk, heavy metal and europop. However, with Kelly Clarkson's hits "Since U Been Gone" and "Behind These Hazel Eyes", which propelled Max back into the spotlight in 2004, he reinvented himself with a new pop rock sound. Since 2008, he's wrote and co-wrote four #1 hits including "So What" by Pink, "Hot N Cold" and "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry, and Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You".
Musical career and personal life
Early life and career
Martin Sandberg grew up in Stenhamra, Ekerö Municipality, a suburb of Stockholm. As a teenager he sang in several bands before joining a glam-style metal band called It's Alive in 1985 as their singer and frontman. It's Alive were formed by ex LAZY members Per Aldeheim and Kim Björkgren on guitars, and John Rosth who had been a member of Lineout. Martin eventually dropped out of high school to pursue a career in music with his band under the nickname "Martin White". In 1988 they participated in the national rock championships and also played as the in-house band at a disco in Cyprus. The band got a breakthrough in 1991, as Dave Constable of Megarock Records offered them to make a demo-record. The later debut album was originally pressed in 1,000 copies and later on given away as a free cover tape in the UK by the Metal Forces magazine.
The decision to focus on a music career paid off as they landed a record deal on producer Denniz PoP's label Cheiron Records, a BMG affiliate. After recording their second album Earthquake Visions, they released three singles in conjunction with the record (including "I'm Your Man" which featured the bonus cut of a cover of KISS' "Parasite") and toured through Europe in 1994 supporting Kingdom Come. Earthquake Visions eventually sold a disappointing 30,000 copies, despite being released in as many as 30 countries. More importantly though, Martin also began collaborating on songs with PoP. Recognising a talent for writing pop songs in the young rocker, PoP renamed his new charge Max Martin and eventually became Martin’s mentor.
Working with Cheiron and Denniz Pop
"I didn't even know what a producer did, "I spent two years day and night in that studio trying to learn what the hell was going on." - Max Martin , March 19, 2001[2]
In 1993 Martin was hired by Cheiron Studios and spent some time learning the basics, before the first production collaboration between Pop and Martin: the Rednex song "Wish You Were Here" in 1995. They both worked on Ace of Base's second album The Bridge shortly thereafter, as well as on albums by 3T, Army of Lovers and Leila K. To date, The Bridge has sold more than six million copies worldwide, including two million in the United States. When Martin eventually left his band It's Alive in late 1995, he was replaced by Anders Jansson.
In 1996, the Cheiron Studios was hired by Zomba to work on Backstreet Boys' self-titled debut album Backstreet Boys. Zomba became the main working partner since the success in 1995. Martin took part in the production of "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)", co-written with Herbie Crichlow, a single which quickly went platinum and climbed to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as the singles "As Long As You Love Me" and "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)". The album was not released in the U.S. until 1997, but was released overseas and caught on all across Europe, eventually selling around 8 million copies worldwide. This led to the Backstreet Boys being relaunched in their home country later on, this time more successfully. Later that year, Martin also co-produced Robyn’s hit "Show Me Love" which ended up on the Billboard top 10.
In 1998, Cheiron Productions worked on albums by 5ive, *NSYNC, Bryan Adams and Jessica Folcker. Jessica Folcker had first been hired as a backing singer for tracks with Ace of Base and Dr. Alban, and her debut album Jessica became an instant hit with singles like "Tell Me What You Like" and "How Will I Know Who You Are" which both sold platinum. After Denniz Pop died of cancer that same summer, Martin took over as director of Cheiron Studios. He soon started working with writer/producer Rami Yacoub, who has been his partner since.
Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears
1999 was a big year for Martin. He wrote, co-wrote and co-produced 7 out of the 12 songs on the album Millennium by the Backstreet Boys. "I Want It That Way", a hit song Martin co-wrote with Andreas Carlsson and co-produced with Kristian Lundin, became the group's biggest single to date and it is still popular today ("I Want It That Way" was voted #10 in the MTV/Rolling Stone list of the "100 Greatest Pop Songs."[3]). A VH1 special, 100 Greatest Songs of the '90s, ranked the song at number 3, making it the highest ranked boy-band single and pop song. Millennium sold over 1.1 million units in its first week in the United States, setting a record for most albums sold in its debut week (that record was later beaten by 'N Sync's No Strings Attached), and was the #1 best-selling album in the world in 1999.
The previous year, Martin also wrote Britney Spears' international hit "...Baby One More Time" for her album with the same name, (this hit single was originally offered to both the Backstreet Boys, who turned it down, and TLC, who passed because they were 'taking time off'[4]). On Vh1's "100 Greatest Songs of the '90s", it was ranked at number 7, making it the second highest song by a female, only behind Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You". Both albums (Millennium and ...Baby One More Time) have sold around 14 million copies each in the U.S. to this date, certifying Diamond Status. Also, within a year of its release, ...Baby One More Time had become the best-selling LP by a teenager in history and the debut hit single remains Spears' biggest U.S. (and international) hit to date. Martin was the first non-American citizen ever to win ASCAP's prestigious award "Songwriter of the Year" in 1999.
Martin has worked on Spears' first three studio albums which were made in the style of teen-oriented pop. However, when Spears recorded her 2003 album In the Zone (considered to be a very sexual album with less teen-pop and more dance, R&B and urban pop), she decided to move away from the teen-pop genre she was so closely associated with. The duo ended up parting ways, and Martin had no input on that album nor on her 2007 album, Blackout. At the request of Spears, Martin produced and wrote for Spears' new album Circus, released December 2, 2008. The track Martin co-wrote and entirely produced is called "If U Seek Amy", which was chosen by fans to be the third single off the album. Different than Martin's previous produced tracks for Spears, "If U Seek Amy" is an electro-pop dance song, in which even the lyrics shows a different, more dance-oriented Max Martin.
When working on her own solo album, to be released in 2001 on Stockholm Records, Lisa Miskovsky wrote the text for Backstreet Boys new hit single "Shape of My Heart" with Max Martin and Rami. The song, originally written for Miskovsky’s own album, was passed along to the Backstreet Boys by Max Martin when Miskovsky determined it did not fit her style. The song became the first single off the group's new album Black & Blue. In the first week of release, "Shape of My Heart" immediately jumped into the Top Five in Sweden (#1), Norway (#1), Canada (#1), Germany (#2), Switzerland (#4), Austria (#5) and Holland (#5). Black & Blue, containing several songs produced and written by Martin, sold 1.6 million units in its first week in America. Martin again received ASCAP's award "Songwriter of the Year" both in 2000 and 2001,[5] and is the first songwriter ever to receive the award three years in a row.
Producer role for Cheiron
The traditional division of work in the record industry typically has the artist writing the songs and then hiring a producer to help shape the sound. At Cheiron it was the other way around; the producers wrote the songs, played the instruments, engineered and mixed the recordings and the artist was only brought in near the end of the process to do the vocals. For example, on Britney Spears's second album Oops!… I Did It Again, Cheiron had already written seven songs and had proceeded to record the layers of music before Britney even arrived at the studios. It took her only one week to do the vocals. Martin and his team worked more like a band that alternated singers. Martin explained his working method:
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I want to be part of every note, every single moment going on in the studio. I want nothing forgotten, I want nothing missed. I'm a perfectionist. The producer should decide what kind of music is being made, what it's going to sound like--all of it, the why, when and how. - LA Times, 6/05/00 |
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Startup of Maratone
Despite the success, Cheiron Studios was closed down in 2000. The reason behind the decision to close it down was, according to the press release on their homepage, that the heart and soul of the studio had been lost with the death of Denniz Pop. Another reason for closing the studio down was for the people at Cheiron Studios to be able to do more experimental music work without the weight of the now infamous name Cheiron upon their shoulders.
Max Martin and Tom Talomaa started a new production company together named Maratone in January 2001. Also, David Kreuger and Per Magnusson started A Side Productions and Kristian Lundin started the production-company The Location and the publishing-company Location Songs together with Jake Schulze and Andreas Carlsson (both also members of Cheiron's production team) at the same location as Cheiron Studios. The first songs to be written and produced at Maratone were four tracks for Britney Spears' third album Britney. The Maratone production crew now consists of producers/songwriters Max Martin, Rami, Alexandra and Arnthor. Following the work with Celine Dion on the album One Heart in 2003, few new hits appeared from Maratone until 2005.
Kelly Clarkson goes to Sweden
In 2004, former American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson travelled to Sweden to collaborate with Max Martin and Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald on songs for her album Breakaway. They decided to create songs that were rocker than anticipated by the fans, as can be heard on the hit singles "Since U Been Gone" and "Behind These Hazel Eyes". "Since U Been Gone" became a huge hit and remains the biggest hit of Clarkson's career, and one of the biggest hits of 2005. The next single, "Behind These Hazel Eyes", actually reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 while the single "Since U Been Gone" was still on the chart. In 2009 he also co-wrote Kelly's comeback single "My Life Would Suck Without You", which has the record for the highest jump #1 jumping from 97-1 in 1 week. It is also Clarkson's 2nd number-one
Writes songs with Marion Raven
In 2005 Max Martin collaborated with the Norwegian singer Marion Raven for the release of her debut album entitled Here I Am, writing the song "Break You" and co-writing with Raven the song "End of Me". Both were hits in Asia, and Norway. In 2007 "Break You" was included again in Raven's North American and European debut album called Set Me Free. The American singer Megan McCauley did a cover of "Break You" in 2006.
Pink and Backstreet Boys
In 2005, Martin collaborated on 4 of the 12 songs on Backstreet Boys' comeback album Never Gone, including "Climbing the Walls", "Just Want You to Know", "Siberia" and the melancholy love song "I Still...", a trademark song for the Backstreet Boys. Martin wanted the album to be more of a contemporary, alternative pop album with a little R&B. The resulting album had a more organic music style with more live instruments, and a departure from The Backstreet Boys' earlier work.
Martin also wrote and produced songs for Pink's very successful and critically acclaimed platinum selling fourth album I'm Not Dead. Worldwide the album was the sixth biggest selling album of 2006, going top 5 in the UK, and platinum and top ten in the United States, and number one in Australia and Germany. In Australia the album had 6 top five singles, and sat at number one for a great many weeks, and a record 63 weeks in the top 10, and went 9 times Platinum. Even as of June 2008 the I'm Not Dead album returned to the Australian Top 40 ARIA charts where it still remains - a total of 110 weeks in the Australian Top 40 thus far. Martin also collaborated with Pink for her fifth studio album, "Funhouse," released October 2008. Martin produced the first smash hit single, "So What."
In a recent interview Nick Carter of the backstreet boys said that they have gone to Sweden to get songs for their new album from Martin. One of which is the song "Bigger".
Songwriting and Producing
Awards
- Swedish Grammis Award in 1998
- ASCAP's Songwriter of the Year in 1999
- ASCAP's Songwriter of the Year in 2000
- ASCAP's Songwriter of the Year in 2001
See also
References
External links
