Decoding the Most Important Songwriter of Our Time
In music history, the people who excel at the behind-the-scenes jobs of writing and producing hits can earn their own kind of glory: becoming synonymous with a sound. Quincy Jones will forever be known for the warm tang of disco strings and jazz chords. Jack Antonoff is currently associated with fist-in-the-air fun summoned by reverb, synths, and famous women feeling liberated to sing sillily.
How to sum up Max Martin, the most important songwriter and producer in decades? The 51-year-old Swede has written or co-written 25 No. 1 Hot 100 hits—a streak surpassed only by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Starting in the ’90s (with Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time”) and continuing. He has also rarely spoken in public. “We actually haven’t come up with a name for what Max has done,” Simon Cowell . Think of Martin as a bay leaf: influential yet imperceptible.
