The Japan Times - Hitmaker Max Martin back with Taylor Swift for 'Showgirl'

At first glance, Martin looks more suited to work with heavy metal bands than pop icons.

Indeed, the career of the long-haired, bearded musician clad in black started in metal and hard rock.

Martin -- born Karl Martin Sandberg in the Stockholm suburb of Stenhamra -- entered the music scene in the 1980s as a singer for the band It's Alive which, he says, took inspiration from Metallica, KISS and Def Leppard.

In the early 1990s, he pivoted to work more in songwriting and production, quickly making a mark with global hits for Swedish groups Ace of Base and Army of Lovers.

Without leaving Stockholm, Martin attracted the attention of the Backstreet Boys -- his work on the boy band's mega-hit self-titled debut album opened doors in the United States.

Martin's work stands out for how he shapes the sound, but also for his composition.

"That's definitely something that's always been a little bit more prevalent in hip-hop where, a lot of times, you get a producer because they're really good at creating beats," explained Michael Johnson, a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

For Clay Stevenson, an associate professor at Elon University, "his hits focus on booty-bouncin' and head-boppin' beats that are unforgettable."

"Add relatable and repetitive lyrics to catchy melodic hooks and there it is -- the Max Martin formula," Stevenson said.

- 'Monosyllabic pop' -

This recipe for success spawned some of the biggest pop bangers of the last 30 years, including "...Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears, The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" and Katy Perry's "Roar."

Martin first entered the Swiftverse in 2011, when the then-21-year-old was looking for a new sound to help her transition from country starlet to pop princess.

The result was the number one hit "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," which the duo co-wrote along with two other songs on her 2012 album "Red."

For her follow-up album "1989," he co-wrote or produced multiple hits including "Shake It Off" and "Bad Blood."

"What Taylor Swift learned from Max Martin was how to work with monosyllabic pop music... with not having really long sentences drive the song always, but letting words be minimized to where they were supporting the music," said the University of Alabama's Eric Weisbard.

For Elon's Stevenson, "in the new Taylor Swift era, fans weren't expected to follow a story, but rather go on a ride. Martin was critical in this evolution with the creation and production of many of those hits."

- 'Bangers' -

Swift's last four albums, ending with "The Tortured Poets Department," were intimate affairs.

But this year, she teamed up once again with Martin and his regular collaborator Shellback (Karl Johan Schuster) to capture what she called the "effervescence" in her life at the moment.

Swift, now 35, is certainly on a high, between her mammoth Eras Tour and her engagement with NFL star Travis Kelce.

"It just comes from like the most infectiously, joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life," Swift, speaking on Kelce's New Heights podcast, said of "Showgirl."

The album, which is out on October 3, will be a tight 12 songs, some of them "bangers," Swift herself said -- harking back to the era of the infectious "Shake It Off" and "22" with Martin.

The 54-year-old Swedish producer's calculated approach is not for everyone, with some saying it generates songs that are too neatly packaged, but it has inspired other genres like K-pop.

"He cranks out hit after hit with seemingly little concern for the authenticity of the music," said Stevenson.

"American producers may think a Max Martin song is corny when they first hear it, but they'll find themselves singing it when they turn it off."

For Johnson, that description of Martin might have been apt during his days with Spears and the Backstreet Boys.

"In the last few years, he's actually won some Grammys," the Berklee professor said. "I think now it's a little bit of a different story."

S.Yamamoto--JT