Welcome to Rolling Stone's five Hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stones hugely popular, influential and sometimes controversialist.
I'm Britney Spanis and.
I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great.
We have a very important songwriter and producer you talk about today very special episode. We'll be discussing Max Martin and his contributions to the five hundred Greatest Songs list, of which he has four songs on the list. There is Backsheet Boys, I Want It That Way and Taylor Swift's Blank Space. But today we're going to talk very specifically about the song Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. I mean there are so many artists on the list
that he has worked with in different capacities. I mean there is very there are very few pop artists who have not had a session in Sweden with Max Martin and his kind of group of songwriters and producers that he works with. Of course, he's worked with Ariana Grande and Adele, Backstroop Boys, Robin Slain, Dion and sing Demi Lovado, Selena Gomez, Perry Katie Perry think. I mean, it's like it's a big deal if you don't If you don't work with Max, it's almost as big of a story to not work with him.
It's like, what's wrong with you if you don't? You know?
And he's had twenty five number one hits that he has written or produced or both, and he has five Grammys. His first Grammy ever didn't come until he worked with Taylor Swift. But I mean that kind of figures into a lot of what we'll probably talk about a lot of the music that he's worked on and how we're.
Giving it to due as as the years go by.
And one of the fun facts about Max I learned while researching this is that he was in a hair metal band that kicked off his career called It's Alive. I actually had no idea that that was the background.
Of how he was originally signed.
And then he ended up starting to work on Dennis Pop's label, and Dennis Pop took him under his wing because they realized he had this, you know, brilliant pop mind, which was very smart. And then lo and behold, the Backstreet Boys come come call, and that's when Max gets his really big break as a pop songwriter is working
with the Backstreet Boys on their self toile debut. In nineteen ninety six, he worked on Quit Playing Games with My Heart, which hit number two on the Hot one hundred and was a big moment for both Backstory Boys Max Martin for pop music and kind of set the tone for years to come to this day.
Unbelievable and Max Martin, what was he like twenty fourth that, yes, was barely older than the Backstreet Boys that the stereotype is, you know, the young hungry boy band and then the manipulatives Fengali figure. He was like just their age. It's it's crazy how young he was when he began this whole yeah, Swedish hair metal as disco revolution that took over the.
Pop world, and the Backstor Boys had their own Spenglly to worry about it.
Sax Martin didn't need to add to that.
He was literally the least to their.
Problems and the placement of the songs that are on the list. We have blank Space at three fifty seven, which we have a whole episode we're gonna talk about that song because of course we have to Backstreet Boys. I want that way comes in at two forty, Britney Spears's Baby One More Time comes in at two o five, and Kelly Clarksonson she began clock cent at number ninety three hits the top one hundred.
I guess I'm curious since you go way way back, yeah, with like the pop artists. Yeah, that he began with. What was your sort of Max Martin origin story?
It was definitely Backstreet Boys. I think, like what's great about the that late nineties pop boom that Max was so ingratiated and was that that was when I was six to nine, you know, like this was the time when I was really formulating my own personality and taste in music.
Amazing. Well, that the whole Carson TRL era unthinkable without Max Martin. Yeah, who everybody got to know his name because he was on so many hits. But it's wild that he was such a behind the scenes personality.
It still is.
Yeah, yeah, he really he is very press shay. He doesn't talk about his work very much, very rarely, I mean doesn't do interviews at all, as much as he's such a major presence, Like that is a name brand person of someone that like everyone knows Max Martin.
If you love pop music.
You know that name, and you're very familiar with it. So he's like such a large, larger than life presence in pop music, but he still kind of stays very silent and stays behind the scenes and stays away from it and really lets the artist kind of build that narrative around the songs and around who they are and kind of how they fit into it. And you know, every once in a while we will get the kind of glimpses into his creative process from the artist talking about it.
But for the most parts, he's just very He kind of just stays out minds his business, and that's why he writes great pop songs.
He minds his business absolutely.
He had never had any interest at all and being a celebrity producer. He just he didn't want anybody to know his face or his voice or his ideas. Yeah, he was always about the artist in the cell and I.
Mean all the artists that he works with and was such a part of their careers. And I mean both in terms of the star making moments that he's been a huge part of, but also for the shifts in people's own sort of musical sounds, in their own kind of careers. He's been such a big part of every turning point for a lot of the biggest names in pop music over the last nearly three decades that he's
been working. All these songs speak so much for themselves, so you don't really need him to weigh in, even though obviously we are nerdy about that and would love to hear what would love to hear him talk about that process and things like that. But yeah, I mean, those songs so speak for themselves and change pop music for I mean again, we still are hearing the reverberations of what he started to do with the Backstreet Boys and on today.
Everyone tries to get that.
Sound absolutely and has never sounded dated. None of these songs sound like oldies. Yeah, the Backstreet Boys songs, it's funny that those are a little before Britney blew Up, Britney Spears the other Brittany. But it's it's wild that even then it was such a distinctive sound, like you were a fan, you were right on the right in on the ground floor with the Backstreet Boys.
Yeah, I mean it so just the combination of genres. Obviously, there's so much of that euro pop eurodance sound that was taking over the clubs in the nineties and was such a big part of dance music and kind of the underground music of that time. But there's so much of that R and B sound because all of these bands and these artists who were singing his songs were such big fans of the R and B music of
the time. Backstreet Boys were imitating New Edition, and Britney Spears is such a fan of Mariah and Janet and every you know, just any and Whitney Houston and every R and B singer of the of the nineties. So you kind of hear that so much in the melodies that he's doing, and like the actual kind of beats are are so Euro dancing and kind of like Euro trashy kind of dance music, which is great something I
love a lot. And yeah, a little bit of New Jack Swing and some of the songs, and especially in the ballads, and so it's kind of an interesting fusion that he was playing with that worked really well because it meshed so much with what these artists were wanting to do musically anyway, like who they were as vocalists, and let that shine on a lot of these songs.
Yeah, and of course, baby One More Time with Britney Spears. I think that's probably when people started to say, Okay, there's this producer in Stockholm who's got this sound, because the Backstreet Boys songs they were huge, but the fact that you know, Britney Spears came out of nowhere with
this just absolutely massive song. I mean that the euro pop and R and B mentioned, but also so much metal in his production style, which is why it's so wild what you say about his Swedish hair metal roots, because there really is that apocalyptic bam bam bam and.
Everything he it nods to the eighties without feeling overtly eighties in a lot of ways. All the songs are very like bombastic and very like big, which is great Rolling Stone.
When we did our list of the greatest debut singles of all time, maybe One More Time was an easy pick for number one. It's the perfect example of a song that comes out of nowhere and introduces not just a new artist, but a new aesthetic and a new approach to the sonic architecture pop music. And you definitely remember where you were the first time you heard that song. Yeah, you probably said, what the hell is this?
Do you remember the first time you heard it?
Yes, I do. It was December ninety eight and it was that song and it was hearing it on MTV and it sounded so alien, so robotic, which was a really bizarrely distinctive thing about the Max Martin sound. And it's where the hell is this song coming from? And I thought, I cannot tell where this singer is from on the planet, like it might be euro might be US, but it could be anywhere. And I said, I cannot tell if this singer is old or young. I can't
tell anything. It's just this amazing, bombastic, like you said, thunderous, apocalyptic kind of sound. It was mind blowing to hear it for the first time and realized, this is something we never heard anything that sounded.
Like this before.
Yeah, I really love a detail that Brittany had given around that time of wanting to imitate soft cells, tainted love, yeah, and vocal.
That was when I interviewed it, and I had so many questions about that song, and she said, yeah, I wanted to get that tainted love sound. And she said, like, that's what I was going for, that sort of new wave sound, And she said, I wanted my voice to sound like that. So she said, I didn't want to get any sleep, so I stayed up, stayed out very late the night before, and she said, I kept telling myself, Brittany, don't get any sleep, because you want that raspyat rowl
in your voice. She definitely got that.
It works so well on it.
It sure does. Soft Cell must have been so honored.
Thinking about how every pop star has tried to imitate that over the years is so incredible, Like that is a song that everyone wants a baby one more time moment when they come out the gate, of course, and like they want that.
You know, it's a big pop moment. But there's no one else who could.
Have delivered it the way that Britney Spears had done, because even like Max had offered it to Backstreet Boys at first and TLC and they had been sort of possibly going to be the one singing that song and then both rejected it, and then it went to Britney Spears, who loved it immediately.
Absolutely, I firmly believe that if either of those artists had recorded the song, Britney's version is still the one we would know, it would have been just as big because it was made for her, and she for it. It's so funny to think of TLC, who were adults, yeah, singing the song. It's like, no, this isn't a song for adult veterans to sing. This is a song for a new voice who's got something to say say musically, sonically and in every way.
Yeah. Yeah.
The only regret about that is that I wish I could hear Left Eyes maybe one more time.
First, well, you could definitely tell that, you know that the TLC vocal influence. Yeah, but yeah, would have been all wrong for a singer, is you know? I mean Tea Boss was always super smart sounding singer. She never came on naive or confused. She was always super in control. It's something that just defines her power as a vocalist.
It just feels so perfectly in tune with everything that Brittany loved and was kind of already a fan of in music, and then also kind of helped mold this this like important phase of her career and kind of the way that we were introduced her in the video of course, like that was her idea to kind of be like, I'm a teenager, I'm singing for other teenagers. I'm going to be in high school where she went to the high school where they filmed Grease as a
big Grease fan that she was, and did that. I mean, it just it feels like so perfectly, like such a perfect teen idol pop moment in that way. That album just blew up so quickly, and so it's kind of I mean, the song itself blew up so quickly. So it's kind of hard to even think of a time where it wasn't everyone that I knew knew of Britney Spears or had like an opinion on her or had you know, were even just like arguing about like their favorite Brittany songs and kind of all this, you know,
all that stuff. But yeah, it's kind of it's tough to imagine a time before like Brittany was such a part of my own listening habits and of my own kind of music taste and for all, like all the acts that again like Max is so integral part part of their careers is Backshitt Boys and Sync and Brittany and those are all artists that just immediately became in heavy.
Rotation for absolutely.
And next up we will be joined by Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt. We're here with senior writer Rolling Stone, Brian Hyatt. Thank you so much for joining.
Us, Thank you for having me.
I know you're a big.
Max fan, and you're a big Sabe one more time.
Fan for sure.
You've spoken with so many artists and especially artists that have some relationship with Max, Right, what do you think it is about him that that keeps beyond of course the obvious of he has so many hits under his belt, so twenty five number one singles, things like that, like why do people still call Max Martin above all else to make that special moment in their.
Career, say that he sort of cracked the mathematical code to writing pop songs, And then when you ask him to explain that, they start to and nothing they ever say really makes sense to me. It has to do with I think some of it has to do with the amount of repetition of bits of the melody. You know, you repeat this bit twice, but then change it, change
one note the third time. There's stuff like that. There's stuff that has to do with the syllables and thus the rhythm of the you know, the rhythm of the melody. He occasionally doesn't interviews but he doesn't do interviews with people who know how this stuff works, who can be like, you know, basically, what do you mean? It's a scientific
approach A and then belt. The other thing is that, weirdly, like a lot of pop since like ninety eight or so, it's really bringing in so many rock influences into what we're calling pop, and he's he was a big part of starting that as well. He was kind of a hair metal fan. He's a Springsteen fan. You can hear it on a Baby One More Time. You can hear it on Oops I Did It Again, which was tragically omitted from our list, but you know, also one of
the greatest songs of all time. It's like they can so easily just take out the synth and change them into heavy guitars and you have rocks on which of course so many people did right. The ironic and then suddenly not ironic cover of Baby One More Time was such a phenomenon, as you remember, at the for indie bands at the time.
The bullying for super version is very good.
There was a Travis version, there was who else?
Who else? Thompson did a great version, a shockingly great version.
That was when he was doing the entire history of popular music from like fifteen hundred to that, right, Yeah, millennium pop.
Yeah, it ended with Baby One More Time. It like began with like, you know, medieval ballads. And there's something kind of beautiful about that because like these are two allergic folk songs. They traveled, they have weird lives.
He thus proved, like as as they say in the Matrix, that nineteen ninety nine was the peak moment of your human civilization. So that that's like when a thousand years of pop music peaked with Baby One More Time? And there really was We've had all this nice music since then, but was there really any more need for songs after Baby One More Time?
I just stopped right there.
Do you have a favorite Max Martin song?
I mean the ones on the list? I mean I want it that way? Is I like Baby One More Time? The record, the recording better, but I want it that way. It's just such an impeccable song. It might very well be that one, And we all have a soft spot for It's My Life by a Bun Jovie.
Great Hamy and Gina's sequel.
You know. One of the things that was so interesting about that is it was Max returning just as I was saying the fact that really he was kind of right bon Jovi's songs, but like with the synth dress up, you know, the boy band or teen pop dress up. But then he just straight up went back into the Bonjobe's song and proved that the formula was so durable. Both that and since she'd been gone again, does the same thing that is my life does? It takes the implicit rock and makes it explicit.
Yeah.
I love the way Tyler Swift used him, which is she kind of worked with him and learned everything he had to teach, and then she's like thank you, and then went on to do it without him, And then I think that she's one of the only artists who did it that way.
I think that that also says a lot about her.
You know, Yeah, what were your favorite songs? Rob of the Maximartin Cannon.
Well, if I had to choose, and I do at this moment, my three would be Avril Levine's greatest song ever, What the Hell from twenty eleven, Wow, her midlife crisis, Live in her Life thirty something post divorce. Avril absolutely perfect song. Every time I hear it, I think this is the song that will outlive all the other ever
Lavine songs, and it's such a bop. The Max Martiness of it is so huge, but he's as always, he's really great at listening to these artists and what their voices and what they're good at, and just as he did. I think it's her version of bon Jovies, It's My Life, and then a song that I know we all love,
Selena Gomez Hands to Myself. I think it proves, if I may use this expression, that Max Martin is the metaphorical Gin and Juice and Taylor Swift's New Romantics Yeah, which to me is the culmination for both of their careers. This is such a perfect peak for them to arrive at.
I mean, even on a song like I Feel Like break Free, I always think of as sort of like peak kind of recent years Max Martin, where it is sort of that good kind of weird lyricism, that very like kind of swedishisms that are in there, where you're like, now I've become who I really are and you're like, this is such like a Britney Spears like ninety nine line, that's.
Who writes songs in English for so many decades and refuse to learn.
But it's a great line. It works so so great.
Like now I become who I really are, Like that's stuck in my head.
Constantly, Like again, we don't know who did what, but I refuse to believe Max Martin didn't write those himself because you look at you know, I want it that way. And it's mind blowing that a song impeccable, like you said, and a song that's a standard and a classic that makes almost no sense. Almost no phrase of the song connects with any other phrase of the song.
I think, like I always really love how kind of casualness is it? Like there is something that feels very like he just like wrote down a phone conversation he had with like an X like set five seconds before he started writing the song.
Absolutely, it's really amazing when you think of how many conversations begin here's the thing and that song. Yeah, I mean, so many genius things about that song, but that it actually uses that to begin a conversation in a song.
Yeah, I mean that song wasn't originally supposed to go to Clor Clarkson either, as supposed to. It was originally pink and then Hillary Duff really were the other two who almost got that song, I had no idea. I mean, Pink, you know, obviously her and Max have had a very long, ongoing collaborative relationship. They've worked on a ton of music together to this day, so that makes sense. But of
course Breakaway is I would say Kelly's classic album. Of course, this is an album that really really helps her solidify who she is as a pop star. And I mean Misindependent was kind of a good precursor to what she would end up doing on like Breakaway and Misindependent from the Thankful era kind of helped maybe push her towards
this like pop rock moment. But since You've been gone as the as a second single from that being this like big, boisterous, like kind of like pop punky, pop rocky kind of moment from her with like these giant guitars and like this like booming voice that she has
that works so well over it. I mean, there's no one else that can sing that song in the same way with maybe one more time, Like you know, even with the potential other artists who were going to sing that song first, it just makes so much sense with who ended up with it that I feel, no, no remorse in Losing a pink version of Since You've Been Gone.
You know totally and such a great moment where this sort of this whole like school of New York meet Me in the Bathroom era, like punk rock was finding it's it's pop outlets, and that this is so perfect just even that they get that perfect drum sound from fabmready of The Strokes, the sort of The Strokes hard to explain drum sound, and the way it becomes the yeah, yeah yeah song, and the turnaround when it's exactly Brian Chase's drum sound, and that all these precise fan details
are worked so perfectly into this song. But you don't have to know any of those references to respond to the song. It's it's as timeless as a as a breakup song can be. Yeah, I'm so moving.
Off, And I mean the yaas do not like Since You've Been Gone very much.
Just feel somewhere in their hearts. Beyonce and hold Up must have opened them up to the idea of like their pop presence well and maps you know, another one of the greatest yeah of the century. But it's wild that so typical of Max Martin's genius to find stuff to use everywhere in pop music.
Yeah, And I thought it fascinating that, like in the twenty ten version of the list, that kind of interim revamp that happened between the twenty four list and the twenty twenty one list, Since You've Been Gone was ended up being added to that. And I mean, of course that meant that within the few years I had been At had already been seen kind of immediately as one of the best songs that Max Martin had made thus far. But I'm curious, like what you think in a future
revamp of the list will be. It still feels kind of like a low number of his songs are represented on the list, But yeah.
That seems like a I mean, I think Rob has a lot of later period candidates.
That song that I'm sure we all love. So what the Pink song?
To me?
It's funny that Pink has so many classics, but the Pink Maxim Martin collaborations are so unique for both of them, They really bring something out of each other. Yeah, so Wet to me is like the pinnacle for what that collaboration achieves in terms of attitude and sound and humor and rage and everything.
Yeah, in terms of other Max songs that should probably or hopefully will make the list in the future, Like, there are very few boy band songs on the list, and of course I want that ways on there. It's going to be Me another song that I was I was kind of surprised that we didn't have it so good that and sync representation on the list at all, but especially It's going to Be Me.
Another Backstreet Boys song that no way reminds me of any Britney Spears song. Is Larger than Life. Yeah, Yeah, phenomenal song.
Yeah, and everybody that synth on Everybody is so like the you know, the beat on that is so good.
I remember it was a huge moment in terms of Max Martin becoming a recognized brand. When Britney's You Drive Me Crazy and the backs Your Boys larger than Life where hits it around the same time, people are like, I'm seeing a pattern here. But Larger than Life is such a perfect I mean, in so many ways, it's the ultimate boy band tribute to the audience. Yeah, and it's such a fantastic, bombastic song in every way.
Yeah.
Yeah, And Brian mentioned oops I did again too earlier in that song. Again, another another Britney classic that could very easily make a future.
Yes of the list.
Yes, I thought the old lady put it at the bottom of the ocean. Speaking of which, nothing was more confusing, I'm sure to many kids than Backstreets Back all right, when Backstreet Boys was to Americans at that point a new act. Obviously they've been had a certain amount of bigness in Europe, but it was one of those things where I think it almost had a sort of inception effect on people would be like like like like that, the sort of the Simpsons boy band, with the subliminal
messages like well they're back. I mean, I guess I already liked them. I think that's a big secret.
To this success so much.
How did I miss the whole Backstreet era? A phase of Max Martin's that that we have to give up to because I know we all like feel deeply about this, but Katie Perry's yeh star making collaborations with me.
I mean again, Katie Perry not being on the list is a travesty.
But that's neither here nor there. I have my own we.
Have to insert a Brittany pop ed about.
Yes, I mean, there's there was a lot of a lot of things that went wrong, But at the end of the day, we shouldn't be ignoring Teenage Dream or One.
Of the Boys as classic albums.
But I think because of what Max has been associated with, which was so much of this pop movement at the end of the nineties and early two thousands, pop movement that was seen as very manufactured and these like artists that versus been galid and these artists who like didn't have agency and things like that or creative input. I do think that's obviously affected the way that people remember these songs right and remember and kind of give respect
and due to what was created during that time. And I think, you know, we're seeing a little bit more of Max Martin as a songwriter and producer kind of get a little bit more respect as years go on. And I mean there is music's being celebrated on Broadway, the musical Musical and Julia, which is I don't know
if either guys have seen that wacky time. I'm wondering, do you do you guys think that there's still even more due for him to be paid over the years as a songwriter producer, Like do you think that we still have kind of lost a little bit of that. People really respecting his contributions to pop music, or do you think it's been properly bestowed upon him.
I think as time goes by, his legend will just rise because none of these songs. Yeah, you know, none of them are dated, none of them are oldies. These are all songs that none of us would be surprised to hear on the radio today.
Yeah, like I said, I feel like those covers, there was a striking sort of acknowledgment from many people in this sort of indie world, in the rock world and the singer songwriter world, that well, these songs are really
well written. Like right away, there was sort of this, like I said, all those covers and it was immediate, it was and it was there were all these acoustic covers of Baby One More Time, which didn't happen with like any random pop song, and it didn't happen with ones that it should have, Like you know, I mean, where's the love for all those great Ashley Simpsons songs, Like no indie band's ever covered them to this day. So it doesn't always happen. It's some you know, there's
often that barrier. But something about this there's a level of craft I think that you can have where it's just it overcomes those kind of genre prejudices.
So I feel like kind of.
Since the beginning, at least in maybe some critics, for sure, are a number of critics, and then definitely like musicians, songwriters were like, whoa this guy is like and that's sort of why even you know, people who were songwriters, like you know, like the Great Bad Job, you know,
but like you Bunjovi, who was a songwriter. I mean, he was like, I have to work with this guy because I you know, he's cracked something, and you do hear about people studying who aren't necessarily in the pop work kind of studying that melodic math and trying it.
So I think he's got that love.
Couldn't have more love for musicians and songwriters already, And then I think critics have mostly caught up. So I think he's you know, he's an absolute legend already for sure.
Well, thank you so much, Brian, Yeah, thanks for having me.
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written and hosted by me Britney Spanos and Rob Sheffield. Executive produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale and Christian Horde, and produced by Jesse Cannon with music by Eric Zeiler