
Yard Act

Max Martin is the Swedish songwriter and producer who, by almost any measure, is the most successful pop hitmaker of the modern era. Born Karl Martin Sandberg, he fronted a glam-metal band before being taken on by Denniz PoP at Stockholm's Cheiron studio, where he was renamed and learned the craft that would reshape the charts. His run began in the late 1990s with Britney Spears's Baby One More Time and the Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way, and never really stopped: he has written or co-written some thirty Billboard Hot 100 number ones, an all-time record. The artists on his ledger include Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, Katy Perry, P!nk, Ellie Goulding, Kesha and Coldplay. He has won five Grammy Awards, among them Producer of the Year, and has taken ASCAP Songwriter of the Year a record eleven times. Across thousands of credits, his fingerprints are on the sound of contemporary pop itself.