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TIMEeurope.com: Travel & Arts -- Top of the Pops

Europe FROM THE Mag Fourth dimension

March 19. 2001 vol. 157 no. 11

Top of the Pops

Never heard of Max Martin? You've heard his songs, and they're monster hits around the world. Hither's why

By JEFF CHU Stockholm

Max Martin, the man behind many a superlative xl hitting

"Nah," Max Martin says, gazing out across the Stockholm cityscape. "I don't recollect I'll ever motility away." And why should he? The Swedish capital may exist a far cry — and a long plane ride — from the hyperactive nervus centers of pop music in New York and Los Angeles, but manufacture execs and artists — even Britney Spears! — make the trek anyway, to Martin's studio on the due south side of town, to the Hitting Human himself. Never heard of Martin? Chances are you've hummed, listened to, danced to or at least disparaged his tunes. "Max is the melody king," says Spears of the homo who wrote her biggest hits, including '... Babe, Ane More Time'. Terminal year alone, the thirty-year-former Swede wrote or co-wrote 4 Euro No. Is: Spears' 'Oops! ... I Did It Again' and 'Lucky'; the Backstreet Boys' 'Shape of My Middle' and Bon Jovi'southward 'It's My Life'. In each of the past ii years, according to ASCAP — the American composers' society that keeps track of such things — Martin's songs were performed and broadcast more often than those of any other writer in the world. Says Simon Cowell, an artist-and-repertoire (A.-and-R.) executive at BMG Entertainment in London, "If you lot've got Max Martin every bit your writer, you lot have a better chance of having a worldwide hit than with anyone else."

For someone with such a stellar reputation in a high-profile business, Martin is unusually reclusive. He avoids P.R. — "Not my chore," he says — and Time'due south exclusive talk with him was his offset full-length English- language interview e'er. And so few people know his real name (Martin Sandberg). And even fewer realize how much of today's pop was Made in Sweden at collectives like Cheiron, Martin's longtime base. (For profiles of other Nordic pop masters, see following story.)

With the steady stream of popstars going into his studio and hits coming out, it's tempting to call back of Martin every bit the managing director of a musical McDonald's — Three up-tempo and one deadening song to get, and hold the cheese. If merely Martin really could cook up a hitting as quickly equally a hamburger. If only his mentor, who taught him everything near the arts and crafts, were still effectually. If only he knew whether his wild success could continue now that he has said goodbye to the place that was, for so long, his musical dwelling house.

Much of that success has come through his work with pop diva Spears. When they first met in 1997, he says, "she told me she idea I was an one-time man." "I was scared of him!" says Spears, who was then fifteen. "I thought he was someone from, like, [rock band] Motley Criie or something." Martin's long hair and leather outfits were remnants of his days as a wannabe rock star. Spears got used to them and to Martin — and they both got down to the business of making hits.

Information technology didn't have long.'... Baby, One More Fourth dimension' and the album of the same name both entered the U.S. charts at No. i, making Spears the kickoff new artist ever to pull off that feat. The Britney hype automobile spinning in overdrive helped, only Martin's prowess for writing songs with global appeal was crucial. "Max has this magic grit that he sprinkles over records," says Louis Walsh, who manages Westlife and Boyzone. "His songs are worldwide pop monsters."

Just as he has his finger on the musical pulse of fandom, Martin also grasps what his artists want to sing. That doesn't happen by chance. Before he starts writing for Spears, he talks with her, sees her shows and finds out what'south in her CD player. "I want the input because that makes the chemistry of the song," he says. Meanwhile, he records ideas on a Dictaphone he carries with him. His self-imposed quality-control government means that merely i idea in 300 gets to demo-recording stage. "You have to be a mass murderer and kill your darlings," he says.

Every survivor has a strong tune line, so a listener volition know the song in seconds. It can exist purely original or a riff on another song. For case, 'Oops! ... I Did It Again' echoes Barbra Streisand'south 'Adult female in Love'. And every song should go anyone — even a fat, balding fish-and-chip shop owner, every bit in the MTV Europe advertizement — moving to the music.

Afterwards the songs are written, demos made and potential tracks picked, it's fourth dimension to record, an intense procedure that Martin says is "24-7." Sometimes, he'll redo sections of a song repeatedly, until he gets what he'southward listening for. "He's difficult on you with the vocals," Spears reports. "And then when y'all hear it, you're similar, 'Oh, damn! I'one thousand so glad. Why didn't I exercise that before? It sounds so good!'"

Martin and writing-producing partner Rami use the same standards when they apply the musical cosmetics — mixing, polishing and layering vocals and instrumentation. "It's sick," says Martin Dodd, a longtime friend and caput of A.-and-R. for record label Zomba Europe. "They'll stay upward literally for three days just to get a drum sound right." Even then, songs don't always turn out equally planned. With the mixing of Oops! ... I Did It Once again, "after a week, Rami and I realized information technology sounded like shit," he says. "It didn't groove." And then they scrapped it and went back to bar one. Two weeks of 18-hour-plus days afterward, the song was done. "It wasn't that nosotros had an extreme deadline," Martin says. "That's merely when you get psycho. That'south when you get manic."

And that's how you get the make clean lines of the Cheiron sound. When Martin describes the sound — "direct, effective, we don't testify off" — you wonder whether he's selling a song or a Volvo. But maybe information technology'due south an apt comparison. His pop vehicles aren't the flashiest. But they're quality, and they get singers exactly where they want to go.

Martin's journey began at home in the Stockholm suburbs. His father was a policeman, his mother a teacher. His older blood brother introduced him to music. "He brought home erstwhile Buss cassettes," Martin says, and with glam-stone diggings from the tape deck and Gene Simmons staring from the sleeping accommodation wall, the rock star bug bit hard. Martin soon started music lessons. He'due south nonetheless not sure why he picked French horn, hardly an obvious pick for an aspiring rocker "I guess it looked cool," he says. Far cooler was the school's music room, where he taught himself to play the drums. But his vocalisation was better than his hands, so he put downward the drumsticks and became a vocalist.

A few adolescent rock bands after, he and his friends started a heavy metallic group called It's Alive. The lessons at his music-focused high schoolhouse couldn't compete with visions of a rock star time to come, so he dropped out to concentrate on the band. It's Alive was the rare act that really got a record deal, from the Cheiron characterization run by producer Denniz Pop. The deal would exist the ring'southward cease and Martin's big intermission.

All forth, Martin had been hiding a secret from his bandmates: he liked pop. Depeche Manner's Just Can't Become Enough? Loved it. The Bangles' Eternal Flame? An all-time favorite. Such music was anathema in headbanger circles, he says, then "I couldn't admit to my friends that I liked it." And he didn't tell them that, afterwards rehearsal, he'd sneak into Cheiron's studio to write songs. Pop songs they couldn't sing, wouldn't sing.

Just Denniz PoP liked them. Originally a D.J., PoP (his existent name was Dag Voile) produced the 1990 Euro hit Hello Afrika by Dr. Alban. Simply it was Popular's production piece of work on Ace of Base's worldwide smash album The Sign that created global opportunities for the producer and his apprentices. Intrigued by the potential he saw in Martin's rock-edged confections, PoP asked him to come on board as a writer-producer in 1992. "I didn't even know what a producer did," Martin says. He soon plant out: "I spent 2 years day and night in that studio trying to learn what the hell was going on." By '95, he was fix to co-produce with PoP on Ace of Base of operations's The Bridge, a sequel to The Sign.

Early on that year, Popular and Martin saw a video of v guys singing at Sea World. They were called the Backstreet Boys and they were expert, Martin says, "only we were concerned that there were likewise many male child bands around." Jive, the Boys' label, pushed. Pop and Martin relented. And Backstreet flopped. We've Got It Goin' On, co-written past PoP, Martin and fellow songsmith Herbie Crichlow, got but to No. 69 on Billboard'southward U.S. chart. Merely Germany fell for the song, and bsb fever swept Europe. The Boys had an edge that bands like Boyzone didn't, and Europeans — well, teenage girls at to the lowest degree — loved it. By mid-'97, America wanted some bsb too, and Quit Playing Games was their quantum, Martin'southward beginning Top 3 U.Southward. striking.

In August 1998, PoP, only 35, died after a brief battle with cancer. The loss shook Cheiron. PoP had been the studio's musical mastermind, says Zomba'due south Dodd, and "had an aureola effectually him that made everyone excel." Simply the industry didn't stop for even a second of silence. The work had to go on. Martin took the musical reins, while studio co-founder Tom Talomaa continued to oversee the business concern side. They kept Cheiron'due south modus operandi — plenty of video-game breaks, practical jokes and the like — that Popular had instituted. And the music actually got bigger, with Martin's hits for Backstreet, Britney, Celine Dion and 'N Sync equally well as huge songs from other teams, including Kristian Lun-din and Jake's Bye Bye Bye for 'N Sync, and Jorgen Elofsson, Per Magnusson and David Kreuger'due south Westlife singles.

So Cheiron's decision to close at the stop of 2000 was a surprise, at least to outsiders. A post on the studio's website said, "Information technology'south time to quit while we're ahead," leaving enough of room for speculation almost what really doomed the striking factory. Martin's music has reportedly made him a multimillionaire (he refuses to discuss his wealth). Maybe a clash of egos caused the rift. Or perhaps Martin had chewed and spit out all the chimera-mucilage pop he had in him. Fiction, he says, just typically he didn't quash the talk. Not his job.

Martin now admits that the breakup was driven largely by his want for the creative space to experiment without the burden of the Cheiron name. While the split ended a unique ethos — "You walked around, someone said, 'Hey, I need a tambourine,' and you'd do it" — he says information technology couldn't have lasted forever anyway. Ane of the studio's large risks was complacency, says Billboard's Nordic bureau chief Kai Lofthus, and now that Martin and Rami accept set up their ain place, Maratone, "they even so take to push button and continue on making skilful music."

Of all the ex-Cheiron guys, Martin and Rami have been the quickest to get their new studio off the ground. Last month, the desks weren't set and the boxes weren't all unpacked. But the TV, the PlayStation and the fridge full of Reddish Bull were plugged in. Britney Spears was in too, working on her 3rd album, slated for a November release.

There may exist more than large names in Martin's future. He's talking with Faith Hill, the state-pop crossover megastar and Grammy queen, near her next album. He may accept a studio reunion with Celine Dion when she returns from motherhood leave next twelvemonth. They worked together on 1999'southward That'southward the Way It Is. Martin calls her vocals on that track the musical equivalent of "a sprinter running the 100 yard in three seconds." And atop his dream list of artists to piece of work with are Madonna, who's "just great," and Prince.

Other A-list acts, such every bit Westlife, accept voiced interest in working with Martin. Merely he says he won't only take any big-proper name project. He recently rebuffed one American vocalist with a stellar tardily-'90s track record. "I turn them down when I don't experience I tin contribute annihilation," he says. "If they already have a keen thing going, I don't see the point of going and messing with it."

Martin is also saving free energy for as-yet-undiscovered talent. While his success with at present-established artists has been terrific, he thinks today's up-and-coming talent could utilize some of the same mentoring that proved invaluable during his own foreigner days. So he has signed on as a "hitmaker" at Tonos (www.tonos.com), the Web forum where aspiring artists and producers can learn from those already in the industry. "There are so many traps, and so many ways of getting screwed in this business," he says.

Carole Bayer Sager, the Oscar-winning songwriter who founded Tonos, had Martin at the top of her list when she was recruiting talent for the site. "He brings ane of the most extraordinary new popular sensibilities to come up along in a very long time," she says. "That'southward equally good as information technology gets for us." Note to wannabes, especially blonde female teen-age ones: Martin doesn't want some other Britney, and so don't send your demo tapes. Just he might similar to return to his musical roots and work with a young rock band that's "harder than Goo Goo Dolls, more like a Metallica."

Such change can exist dangerous when you're a hitmaker with a known product. Fans, critics and even Martin himself may not like what he does next. In which case, he warns, he might even trade music for a career as a "professional video-game player."

For Martin, though, this adventure isn't optional. He has to chase the new or run a risk losing all that divers the old: the innovation, the freshness and — ever, always — the fun. Denniz PoP would approve. Afterward all, PoP was easily bored, always restless, Martin says with a smiling. "He always said, 'Something's gotta happen here.'" Information technology still does. And that sounds similar a new Max Martin song coming on.

With reporting by Hugh Porter/London

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