Max Martin is one of the biggest producers in the world right now. He is the third all-time hitmaker on the Billboard Hot 100 only behind pop royalty such as Paul McCartney and John Lennon. It hasn’t always been singing and dancing for the producer as in the mid-2000s he hit a lull in hitmaking until he heard The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s breakout single. Which became an inspiring hit for many others too. This week The Beat Marches On to the 10th February 2004 When the Yeah Yeah Yeah released the single Maps which inspired Martin to rejuvenate his music career.
Sweden has always had a knack for pop music. Ever since the Eurovision win for ABBA in 1974 and graced our screens with ‘Waterloo’ they have inspired many acts and they the groundwork for what was to come. Throughout the latter half of the 1970s and early 1980s, the band dominated the European music charts. America, however, wasn’t interested in the band and they only had one hit single ‘Dancing Queen’
America did eventually fall for the Swedes in the later 1980s when pop-rock duo Roxette went flying up the charts. In 1989 ‘The Look’ topped the Hot 100 and was named one of the 20 biggest singles of that year. The duet sold 75 million albums worldwide over their career.
In the 1990s at the peak of the alternative rock movement, another Swedish pop group made their impression on the pop world. Ace of Base who like ABBA was comprised of two men and two women helped make the Swedish pop what it is today. Their 1993 album ‘The Sign’ was partly produced by an ex-DJ named Denniz Pop with help from his protégé Max Martin who wasn’t credited but was soaking up Pop’s knowledge. At the time Martin was a singer of a glam metal band called ‘It’s Alive’ and was on the brink of breaking up. A completely different style to the pop music he was aiding Denniz with.
In 1995 Max Martin gained his first credit as a producer with the song ‘Right Type of Mood’ by Herbie Crichlow. It didn’t light up the pop charts but was popular on the dance charts around Europe. Then a man who just formed a new boyband liked their sound and came calling.
The Backstreet Boys’ manager Lou Pearlman hired Max Martin to write songs for his new band. Hits like ‘Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)’ broke into the top 10 of the Hot 100. His reputation was growing quickly and throughout the rest of the 1990s wrote and produced songs for *NSYNC, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, who gave him his first number one in the USA with ‘… Baby One More Time’. Martin carried on creating top 10 hits until the early 2000s when a new sound from New York was getting attention.
In New York, there was a new movement in music at the turn of the century. A new generation of rock stars were reviving the garage-rock scene a la The Kinks and The Troggs. Headed by The Strokes who in 2001 released their debut album ‘Is This It?’ they came onto the music scene with a sleek coolness that cannot be described. Over the next two to three years the charts were dominated by other New York bands Interpol, LCD Soundsystem and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The latter provided one of the most influential songs of the decade.
In 2003, Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their first album ‘Fever to Tell’. At the time it did okay sales-wise reaching the top 20 in the UK and Ireland album charts but not as big as their New York counterparts The Strokes. The band which included vocalist Karen O, guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase, were more successful on the UK charts than the USA despite a big radio presence. It was the third single ‘Maps’ that made a big impression on a lot of influential people.
For Max Martin, however, 2003 wasn’t a great year for him. He only produced three tracks throughout the whole year. Only one of them was a single, the fifth on a Celine Dion album, and was underwhelming. The media was starting to pull out the knives on his career.
One day Martin was sitting in an office with his protégé Lukasz ‘Dr. Luke’ Gottwald and Maps was playing on the radio. In an interview with Billboard, Dr. Luke mentioned how much he liked it. Martin replied “It’s an indie song that goes to six, seven, eight, then the chorus comes…and it goes back down to five” Then as a eureka moment the two looked at each other and agreed to do make ‘Maps’ with a bigger chorus. They wrote the song ‘Since U Been Gone’ which was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song with a big chorus. They didn’t hide it at all, the same key and even the instrumental break are the same.
The took a while for the song to get picked up by an artist. Pink and Hilary Duff had both rejected the song. It was reality show American Idol’s first-ever winner Kelly Clarkson who took the song. She was looking to get away from the reality show stigma and prove herself as a serious musician. She recorded the song at Martin’s studio in Stockholm. The single was released in late 2004 and by the end of the year, it was number 70 on the Billboard Hot 100.
By Spring 2005 the song had reached its peak of number two on the Hot 100. It put Max Martin back on the map and gave him his first US top 10 in three years. After this, he never looked back. It was the first of dozens of top ten for the producer and his protégé Working with the crème de la crème of pop music: Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Taylor Swift among others.
Not everyone was happy with Martin’s comeback. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs didn’t like ‘Since U Been Gone’ at all. Karen O was quoted as saying it was like “getting bit by a poisonous varmint” and in their scene, it wasn’t cool to like pop music.
‘Since U Been Gone’ wasn’t the only song to be influenced by ‘Maps’ though. In 2009 the Black-Eyed Peas used the high-pitched guitar intro as a sample for the song ‘Meet Me Halfway’ and the chorus, “Hold Up, they don’t love you like I love you” was used by Beyonce on her Lemonade album in 2016.
It’s not unusual for artists to borrow bits of songs from other artists. Even The Strokes said they borrowed the intro to Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl’ for their breakthrough hit ‘Last Nite’. It always seems to be the song that borrows becomes bigger than the original and although it’s unfair with the limited musical notes available songs are often going to overlap.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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The websites used for research were:
Max Martin: 64 facts about Sweden’s king of pop | Pop and rock | The Guardian
Max Martin’s Evolution: ‘Baby One More Time’ Producer’s Career in 20 Songs | Billboard – Billboard
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