Last February, leading pop maestro Max Martin was awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize in his native Sweden. The honor prompted the songwriter and producer to grant a couple of interviews—something he has done only a few times in the years since hitting No. 1 for the first of 22 times in 1998 with Britney Spears’ “...Baby One More Time.” Now, Martin’s extensive 2016 chat with Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri has surfaced online translated into English (and been aggregated anew), and the usually silent Martin seems to have relished the moment to theorize what makes a great song. Certainly he has enough of them, having played a big role in shaping Top 40 over the last two decades, starting with the rise of bubblegum in the late ’90s, surviving through the hip-hopification of pop in the ’00s, and coming back full force as the ’10s began. From Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” to Kesha’s “Blow” to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” Martin is someone whose songs are ingrained in the fiber of pop but whose personality is, purposefully, not.
In the interview, Martin mentions that if the chords change often throughout a song, writers should consider a more simplistic melodic accompaniment: “If you’ve got a verse with a lot of rhythm, you want to pair it with something that doesn’t.” He notes an approach he cribbed from Prince, where the chorus instantly sounds familiar because the verse preceding it actually has the same melody. He stresses his obsession with vocal melody down to each syllable, which prompts him to tirelessly re-record with his superstar collaborators until the parts sound just as he sang them on his demos. And he shares a rule he learned from his late mentor Denniz PoP (co-founder of the Stockholm songwriting and production studio Cheiron): a song must be recognizable within two seconds. It’s fascinating stuff, all of which Martin is quick to note does not represent a foolproof blueprint by any means. But reading it and subsequently listening to Popjustice’s (excellent) “Maximum Martin” playlist yesterday, it was hard not to hear these elements in hits replayed within an inch of their lives.
Not analyzing pop to death can ensure that your favorite songs don’t fall apart, as some inevitably do when placed under the magnifying glass. It’s not that Martin’s songs collapse upon closer examination, but you start to be unable to unhear his signature moves—and these are just the few he talks about in the interview. Take “The One That Got Away,” one of Katy Perry’s many Teenage Dream hits co-written by Martin and one of his protégés, Dr. Luke. Like most Martin songs, there is little here that could be considered sonically adventurous—he’s not exactly a production boundary-pusher. If anything, the simple, repeating piano undercurrent and swooping strings give “The One That Got Away” a classic feeling. True to Europop form, the 134 bpm keeps the tempo moving at a clip, and there’s a giant earworm of a chorus. If you listen for it, just as Martin says in the interview, you can hear how he adds one instrument after another, each contributing bit by bit to the intensity of the melody. It’s subtle enough so as to be seamless, but when you’re aware of the song’s seams, they’re all you see.
Decoding the algorithm behind pop has become something of a consumer fad, from New Yorker writer John Seabrook’s lauded chronicle of the modern hit factory, The Song Machine, to the viral New York Times video showing how Diplo, Justin Bieber, and Skrillex made “Where Are U Now.” Trend pieces abound on songwriting camps, the now-common practice of pop music groupthink inspired in part by how Martin and his mentees have always worked. Our fascination with pop as a formula to crack only seems to grow. It is interesting, this idea that a handful of songwriters can shape pop radio at any given moment if they all put their brains together. Or it can skew craven, like when the Chainsmokersbrag about considering every digital metric of their music while writing and drop phrases like “deliverables,” “topline,” and “smash” in interviews. But this growing curiosity about how hits get made—and the pressure to make them, in this post-internet world—can feel like the antithesis of what the very best pop songs do for listeners. They should seem effortless, no matter how many tricks are up their sleeves.
Max Martin probably would agree on this point. Though he says he’s stayed out of the spotlight because his “life is so much easier without the attention,” hearing him talk about how“a great pop song should be felt when you hear it” leads you to believe that, despite his go-to strategies, he knows there’s some unexplainable magic in the way he crafts melodies—and that even under extreme commercial expectations, music cannot be relegated to methodology. “You can hear songs that are technically great, songs that tick all the boxes,” he continues. “But for a song to be felt, you need something else… something that makes you feel: ‘I need to hear that song again’” Trying to figure out what exactly that is probably won’t make you enjoy a pop song more. In fact, it might make you enjoy it a little less. It’s called the secret sauce for a reason.