| Max Martin | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Martin Karl Sandberg |
| Born | February 26, 1971 |
| Origin | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Genres | Pop Dance pop Pop rock Rock |
| Occupations | songwriter producer singer |
| Years active | 1985 – present |
| Website | http://www.maratone.se |
Martin Karl Sandberg (born February 26, 1971) is a 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 hits for pop artists like the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, *NSYNC, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, E-type and Pink among many others.
His trademark during the second half of the 1990s and early 2000s was a danceable, piano/synth-laden pop sound that blended music styles such as funk, heavy metal and europop. However, with Kelly Clarkson's 2004 and 2005 hits "Since U Been Gone" and "Behind These Hazel Eyes", Martin stepped back into the spotlight after reinventing himself with a heavier, rock-tinged sound. Since 2008, he has written and co-written seven number one hits, including "So What" by Pink, "Hot N Cold", "I Kissed a Girl" and "California Gurls" by Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You", and "Baby One More Time" and "3" by Britney Spears.
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Martin 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 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 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. Recognizing a talent for writing pop songs in the young rocker, PoP renamed his new charge Max Martin and eventually became Martin’s mentor.
"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[1]
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 1994. 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 one million in the United States.[2] When Martin eventually left his band It's Alive in late 1995, he was replaced by Anders Jansson.
In 1995, 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 co-produced Robyn’s hit "Show Me Love" which ended up on the Billboard top 10.
In 1998, Cheiron Productions worked on albums by Five, 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.
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 wrote Britney Spears' 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 third highest song by a female. Both albums (Millennium and ...Baby One More Time) have sold around 14 million copies each in the U.S., 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 international hit to date (Note Womanizer is Spears' biggest selling US single [3 million copies sold]). Martin was the first non-American citizen ever to win ASCAP's prestigious award "Songwriter of the Year" in 1999.
Martin 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, she decided to move away from the teen-pop genre. 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.
Spears stated on her Twitter account, that she was on the recording studio in Stockholm, Sweden with Martin.[6] Later on September 29, 2009 it was announced that Martin had worked with Spears on her upcoming compilation album. Martin produced "3", the song debuted #1 in the Billboard Hot 100. Martin is also helping Britney work on her new album to be released This year (2010).
In the late 1999 Céline Dion released "That's the Way It Is"-a song co-written by Max Martin to promote her greatest hits album "All the Way... A Decade of Song". The song became a hit, going to number 1 on the adult contemporary charts in the United States and Canada, and reaching top 10 all over the world. Since the song was released in November 1999, it has cycled 500,000 times on almost 1400 radio stations across Canada and the U.S. In 2003 Martin co-wrote and produced three songs for Céline Dion's album "One Heart". One of them called "Faith" was released as a promotional single in Canada and reached number 4 on the Quebec Airplay Chart and number 37 on the Canadian Adult Contemporary Chart.
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 in early November 1999. 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:
| “ | 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 | ” |
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 famous 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. More recently 2009 has seen a string of hits from the studio including the hits "My Life Would Suck Without You" from Kelly Clarkson and "3" from Britney Spears.
In 2004, former American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson traveled 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 rockier 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 Clarkson's single "My Life Would Suck Without You", which has the record for the highest jump to #1, jumping from #97 in its first week on the chart.
In 2005 Max Martin collaborated with the Norwegian singer Marion Raven for the release of her debut album entitled Here I Am on what may be his first mainstream Rock work, 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.
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, platinum and top ten in the United States, and number one in Australia and Germany. In Australia the album had 5 top five singles, and spent a record 63 weeks in the top 10. As of July 2009 it is presently 10 times Platinum and has been charting in the Australian Top 50 for 146 weeks. Martin also collaborated with Pink for her fifth studio album, "Funhouse," released October 2008. Martin co-wrote the first smash hit single, "So What", plus the tracks "Please Don't Leave Me", "I Don't Believe You" and "It's All Your Fault".
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".
4th runner up of the eighth season of American Idol, Allison Iraheta has been collaborating with Max Martin on her debut album. Her first single, Friday I'll Be Over U is confirmed to be written by Martin. Source:[7] On August 17, 2009, American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert announced via Twitter that he was in New York City with Martin recording a song for his debut album. It turned out to be Adam's worldwide hit "Whataya Want From Me".[8] It's rumored pop superstar Avril Lavigne is working with Max Martin on her 4th album [9]