Welcome back my friends, to the flamboyance that never ends, as Fabulously Flamboyant Friday sashays up to the crease to deliver yet another light-loafered, lubed-up googly from the gasworks-end of musical magnificence.
Since our last Fabulously Flamboyant Friday, we have been blessed with the joyous and momentous news that the universally loved and admired musical genius (no, not Phil Collins), the Goddess respectfully known to us unworthy mortals as The Blessed Tay Tay, is to marry her staggeringly lucky and deeply privileged chap, Travis Kelce (250lb of prime American feetball player and, I’m reliably informed, a truly magnificent tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs). The couple announced their engagement on Tuesday 26th August, 2025 – a date that will doubtless resonate through the ages – and when the news broke, the world quite rightly rejoiced as one.
By complete coincidence, Taylor Swift also has a new album to promote (The Life Of A Showgirl, her latest hot platter and her twelfth studio album, due out in just a few weeks time). Swift composed and produced her new album with a chap called Max Martin (NHRN), a writer and producer with a truly astonishing track record of international gold and platinum success. Martin has achieved this success with a wide and impressive roster of high profile stars, superstars and indeed (as is self-evidently the case with The Blessed Tay Tay) international super-mega-giga-stars. However, the interesting fact about Mr. Martin is that even though he now has decades of seriously substantial success under his belt, he remains a chap who is still largely an unknown chap, at least as far as the general music-buying public are concerned.
To call Max Martin (born in Stockholm in 1971 as Karl Martin Sandberg) a successful songwriter is something of an understatement. In the US alone he has written or co-written no less than 27 No.1 hit singles – and we’re not talking about any old Mickey Mouse “genre” charts here. These have all been Billboard Hot 100 No.1 singles – i.e. on the main US singles chart – and there are not too many songwriters operating in that league: basically it’s Max Martin and Sir Paul McCartney (who has 32 US No.1s), with everyone else left trailing in their very substantial dust.
So Max is a bona fide hit machine, and he’s also Swedish, so he’s not the first from the land of surstromming (quite possibly the most revolting food on the planet), mushy meatballs, moose burgers and dodgy flat-pack furniture to shape the global pop music scene, with of course the mighty ABBA showing the world how it was done way back in the musically magnificent mid-’70s. Max, however, is their very worthy successor. One who has, since the very early days of his career, been a near-constant presence on the international charts, with a highly impressive range of artists queuing up to hire his songwriting services: Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Cyndi Lauper, Celine Dion, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake, Coldplay, Pink, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Ariana Grande and many more. Additionally, as a studio whizz and record producer, his list of satisfied customers is equally impressive.
As a teenager, young Karl played in a number of Scandinavian metal bands (I really must finish my 36 part series on Scandinavian Death Metal…) and by the tender age of fourteen had joined the popular beat combo, It’s Alive, as their lead singer. He soon came to the conclusion that this music lark was a jolly good wheeze and decided it should be his chosen career. Accordingly, he dropped out of school and subsequently set about pursuing his quest for fame and fortune on a full-time basis.
It’s Alive were apparently a pretty decent outfit. They soon began to build a following, started to gain a little local notoriety and, before long, the local music scene started to sit up and take notice. As a result, they eventually came to the attention of a Swedish record producer and his record label. They were invited to enter the recording studio, grabbed their chance with both hands, recorded their material and everyone seems to have been pretty pleased with the results.
Sadly, however, it seems the band didn’t really get much further than that. But young Karl probably wasn’t overly concerned about this, as he appears to have been utterly beguiled and completely fascinated by his first studio experience and the complex production process that went right along with it. Karl (who changed his name to Max Martin around this time) now had some entirely new ideas about his chosen career path and, in short, was now determined to learn everything he possibly could about music production and the dark arts of the recording studio.
Accordingly, Martin got stuck in and set about developing his skills. His persistence paid off when he was eventually invited to join his record label’s studio production team and continue his professional development. Before very long he found himself flexing his newly acquired production muscles by helping Ace of Base create their 1995 sophomore album, The Bridge. It seems the lad done well, because Ace of Base were more than chuffed to see their latest album sell by the truckload and eventually achieve Platinum status. It was a splendid start to his production career and young Max quickly found himself being taken seriously as a studio whizz and an up-and-coming producer.
Additionally, at around the same time, Max did his songwriting credentials no harm at all by co-writing a song for The Backstreet Boys called Quit Playing Games (With My Heart). The track was released as a single and it too sold by the truckload and quickly earned Platinum status. Suddenly, it seemed, young Max was on a roll.
The Backstreet Boys were signed to the Jive Records label, which, at the time, just happened to be the same label that had recently signed a promising young artist by the name of Britney Spears. Her production team were scratching around for a few songs to help launch the young lady’s career and eventually turned to Mr. Martin to see if he had any ideas. As luck would have it, Max was already well prepared for this opportunity, having recently written a new song for the Backstreet Boys, who had promptly rejected it. However, despite this rejection, Max still thought it a good song and one that might be suitable for young Britney. Accordingly, he offered it to the Spears team. They decided it would be a pretty good fit for their fledgling artist and promptly shoved both Max and the young lass into the studio with orders to crack on.
The song in question was (Hit Me) Baby One More Time, which launched Britney’s career in truly spectacular fashion: It became a huge international hit, gave Max his first US number one, topped the charts in over 20 countries and eventually earned quintuple-platinum certification in the US – and that kinda thing doesn’t happen very often to an established artist, let alone an unknown one!
Max was no longer a promising writer and producer, he was now very firmly in the big league. Incidently, prior to Britney, Max had offered the song to the US girl group, TLC, but they had also turned it down, apparently because they were concerned it might be seen as encouraging violence against women.
Anyway, Max was now up and running and over the next few years found himself in very high demand, both as a song writer and record producer. Happily for our tale, Max didn’t waste this golden opportunity to shine. In fact, his consistent and continual success at delivering an impressively steady and reliable stream of international hits for a wide range of artists was so good that, by the early noughties, even the one-and-only Simon Cowell was describing Max as a hitmaker par excellence. In an interview with Time Magazine, Cowell noted that “if you’ve got Max Martin as your songwriter, you have a better chance of having a worldwide hit than with anyone else”.
Max continued to rack up the hits and in 2008 began working with Katy Perry. Together they co-wrote I Kissed a Girl, which became a massive worldwide success, topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for an impressive seven weeks, shifted 4.8 million copies in the US alone, topped the charts in 20 countries, achieved multi-platinum status around the world and eventually sold over 8 million copies. I kissed A Girl became Max Martin’s third US number-one, and from that point on his career soared to new heights. Max began to churn out No.1 hit after No.1 hit and was on his way to had becoming an industry legend. By 2013 he had apparently racked up estimated single sales of well over a whopping 135 million units worldwide.
Astonishingly, Max still hadn’t peaked. In 2019 he co-wrote Blinding Lights, a song recorded by the Canadian singer-songwriter, The Weeknd. To say Blinding Lights was successful is a masterly piece of understatement, right up there with Noah suggesting there might be a spot of rain in the air: Blinding Lights topped the charts in over 40 countries, became the song with the most weeks spent in the US top five, the song with the most weeks spent in the US top ten and the first song to remain in the top ten for an entire year. It would eventually become the longest-charting song in history, charting for an impressive total of 90 weeks, and globally became the best-selling single of 2020 – by quite some distance. On November 23, 2021, Billboard named Blinding Lights as the best performing US chart song of all time. Spotify now claim it is also the most streamed song of all time, and the first song to surpass four billion streams. Not bad, eh?
By 2004, Max had claimed the record for the most consecutive US chart hits and had landed a truly impressive 27 Billboard No1 hit singles; with, as noted above, only Sir Paul McCartney managing to achieve more – and Max is still churning them out and catching up fast.
So what’s the secret to his success? Well, modestly, Max claims there’s really not that much to it. He suggests the key to a hit song is that it must grab the listener in the first few seconds, with an opening that needs to be instantly recognizable, that forges an immediate connection between the listener and the song. Others have noted a significant feature of Martin’s success is the easy accessibility and elegant simplicity of his compositions. Adam Levine (Maroon 5) has claimed that “Max’s secret is probably something along the lines of ‘the simplest, most effective thing is always the best thing’”.
So the question is: if Max Martin is such a hugely successful international songwriter and record producer, with a track record that almost nobody can match, why have so many of the people who eagerly lap up his music and buy it by the truckload never heard of him? Well, the answer to that one is really quite simple: Martin is famously media-shy, rarely gives interviews and doesn’t say much when he does; he generally avoids the spotlight, hardly attends music industry events and doesn’t really bother with any of the usual social media platforms.
Max claims he prefers to spend his time in the studio, crafting and polishing his skills – and to be fair, it’s a modus operandi that does seem to have paid tremendous dividends. Additionally, Martin is apparently somewhat wary of fame, once telling the New York Times that he’s “always been scared of fame. I’ve seen it up close, and I don’t think it’s healthy”. When he eventually received his (IMHO) long overdue Polar Music Prize in 2016, he quipped “well, you did it, you blew my cover. I managed to hide between two speakers in a basement for over 20 years, and then you did this – thanks a lot”.
Now in his 50s, Mr Martin is still producing the hits and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. He has of course received a sack-full of Grammy and other music industry awards, and I’m sure Puffins everywhere (well, at least those Puffins of sound musical taste and a decent set of top quality hearing aids) will be eagerly anticipating the fabulous fruits of his recent labours with The Blessed Tay Tay and the upcoming release of her latest – and no doubt greatest – hot platter. I myself am almost squealing with expectation.
Anyway, that’s probably quite enough of my poptastic prattling for one evening. So I shall bid you TTFN, dear Puffins. May all your passages be salubrious, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.
Goodnight, and may your frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image jazills, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
© Ivory Cutlery 2025
