Max Martin

Max Martin was born Karl Martin Sandberg on February 26, 1971, in Stockholm, Sweden. Before becoming a songwriter and producer, he sang in the Swedish rock band It’s Alive. The band’s connection with producer Denniz Pop brought Martin to Stockholm’s Cheiron Studios in the early 1990s. There, he learned to build pop records around tightly structured melodies and memorable choruses. After Denniz Pop died in 1998, Martin became one of the central figures in the Swedish songwriting community that Cheiron had helped establish.

His international breakthrough came through songs for the Backstreet Boys. He co-wrote “Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)” and “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back),” then wrote “I Want It That Way” with Andreas Carlsson. Released in 1999, the latter became one of the group’s signature recordings. Martin also wrote and produced Britney Spears’s debut single, “…Baby One More Time,” released in 1998. Its opening piano notes and chorus helped introduce Spears worldwide. He followed it with her 2000 hit “Oops!… I Did It Again.” His work during this period also included songs for *NSYNC, among them “It’s Gonna Be Me.”

Martin’s career did not end with the late-1990s teen-pop boom. With Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, he co-wrote Kelly Clarkson’s 2004 single “Since U Been Gone,” a guitar-driven pop song that became a defining hit for Clarkson. He later worked on Katy Perry recordings including “I Kissed a Girl,” “California Gurls,” and “Teenage Dream.” Those songs showed how his melodies could carry different performers’ voices while remaining unmistakably suited to radio.

In the 2010s, Martin collaborated extensively with Taylor Swift. With Swift and Shellback, he co-wrote “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “Shake It Off,” and “Blank Space.” The first appeared on *Red* in 2012; the latter two appeared on *1989* in 2014. He also contributed to Ariana Grande’s “Into You” and the Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face.” His work with the Weeknd continued on “Blinding Lights,” released in 2019, which became one of the longest-running hits in Billboard Hot 100 history.

Martin received the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, in 2015 and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2017. Across these decades, his credits trace a substantial part of pop music’s shift from Cheiron-era vocal groups to solo stars and streaming-era hits.