Switched on Pop - Searching for Max Martin

Episode Date: November 19, 2015

The most omnipresent figure in pop music is also the most elusive: Karl Sandberg, AKA Max Martin, the mad Swedish genius who’s ruled the charts for 20 years. With the help of New Yorker writer John Seabrook, author of The Song Machine, and comedian Chris Duffy, host of You’re The Expert, we go deep into a 21st century pop classic to try and locate the secret formula behind Max Martin’s success. FEATURING Taylor Swift – Blank Space The Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face Backstreet Boys – I Want It That Way Kelly Clarkson – Since You Been Gone Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps Kelly Clarkson – My Life Would Suck Without You Katy Perry – California Girls Taylor Swift – We Are Never Getting Back Together Ariana Grande – Problem N’Sync – It’s Gonna Be Me Britney Spears – Oops I Did It Again Taylor Swift – Bad Blood Icona Pop (ft. Charlie XCX) – I Love It Tove Lo – Talking Body Backstreet Boys – We’ve Got It Going On  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. So I got this email from a listener the other day. Listener says, the nagging question is really about how much real influence the artists have on the final song compared to the often uncredited songwriters and musicians. Ah. I know, right? Okay. Interesting question.

This is a timeless question that we would do well to delve into, Charlie. So why don't we pull back the curtain and see if we can find the little green man? Is the Wizard of Oz a little green man? Maybe he wasn't green. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, let's break down this question that we got from a listener.

You mean the ghost in the machine? Right. How can we give any agency to these pop musicians when we don't know who's pulling the strings, so to speak. And so I'm hearing this listener experiences some sort of tension as an appreciator of music between the marketed product and the actual creative process. And that creative process is so shrouded in mystery that we have to devote an episode to it and try and find out how the sausage gets made. Right now, the best example has got to be Swedish producer Max Martin, right? This mysterious figure who has come up on our show multiple

times, either directly or indirectly through songs we've covered from Taylor Swift's Blank Space to the weekends. I can't feel my face. We've even talked about Backstreet Boys songs. Not much is known about Max Morton, other than that he was in a hair band in the 80s and that now he's a big time producer, because he doesn't do interviews and he really chooses not to have a public persona. Right.

Despite this, he has made his mark in the pop. sphere for over 20 years, making more number one hits than any other artist except for Paul McCartney and John Lennon. That's insane. 20 years dominating the pop charts on Press Senate. But he is a ghost in the machine. And what I'm curious about is, do you think that we could find his fingerprint? If we went into the music, do you think we could actually find that thing which marks a Max

Martin song? For this one, I think we're going to need some help. Bring in the heavyweights. We're going to need some backup, yeah. We have John Seabrook, author of the new book, The Song Machine, Inside the Hit Factory, who probably at this point in time knows more about the reclusive Max Martin than just about anyone else in the world, not named Taylor Swift. I love this book because Seabrook himself goes into the studio, gets to talk to the musicians

who've worked with Max Martin, and in the process, gets closer than most people to Max Martin, and I think it's going to help us find that fingerprint in the music. Hi, is this John Seabro? Yes, it is. Hi, Nate. How do you explain the prominence of Swedish producers and Max Martin on the American pop charts?

Well, I think it has to do with about three or four different things that all kind of work together. They have great music education. The state makes instruments available. private lessons are free. So they come out of school with a much better knowledge of music than American or British

students do. That helps. And also, they're techno savvy as well. And, you know, because so much the music is programmed, that gives them a big head start too. Right. I think the main thing is this ability they have to

combine R&B and pop in a way that American and British songwriters are less able to do because of the racial legacy of those terms. You know, if you think about how rhythmic pop has really become the kind of mainstream pop music, much more sort of rhythm-driven, dance-driven, pop music that you hear on the radio today. I think that is the Swedes, and that's the main reason. They also think that their lack of finesse with English helped them as songwriters

because they didn't get focused on double entendre metaphor with. Instead, they listened to the syllables of the word and thought about how they went with the melody and didn't worry too much about what they meant, even if they didn't actually make sense, and you see that most classically maybe with the Backstreet Boys song I want it that way

which is a Max Martin tune which actually literally doesn't make sense the verses say he does want it that way and then the chorus says I never want to hear you say I want it that way and when the Backstreet Boys actually heard it they said well that doesn't make sense. We have to re-record it. And they did re-record it. And then they listened to both

virgins, and they still decided that the one that didn't make sense was better because the words fit better with the melody. And so, you know, it sounds counterintuitive that somebody's lack of English would actually be an advantage, but I actually think it is in this case. And that's what Martin calls melodic math, where you sort of match up the syllables with the melody and And it doesn't really matter so much what it means. So I think all those four things kind of combined to make the Swedes really very successful. A 20-year career at the heights of the pop industry is remarkable. And in your book, that's maybe even more remarkable for how low of a profile Max Martin has been able to keep.

Not in the book, but I noticed maybe a week ago that you tweeted sort of a rare sighting of Max Martin in a tale. Swift sort of behind the scenes video. Yeah. I mean, that's how it's like spotting a Yeti or something. Right, right, or a white leopard or something. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's amazing.

I mean, that's obviously another reason for his success is that he has never confused in his mind about whether he wants to be the artist or whether he wants to be the songwriter, whereas, you know, most American songwriters that I've met do want to be the artist and uh you know max martin does i mean the incredible thing about max martin is that he does have a fantastic voice he sings all the demos himself and he insists that the artists follow the demos as he sings them very closely so in a way they're kind of like covering max martin's songs but no one's ever heard the original except except for the artist you know uh we all know the songs but we've never heard the master, the author, actually sing those songs.

I wonder if this also comes back to a certain, some particularly Swedish quality of, oh, you do, there's a word for this in your book, which I can't remember now. Jantelaghan. Yes. Jantelagin. The laws of Jant, Yante, I guess. Yeah. It's actually a Norwegian concept comes from a Norwegian novel, but, yeah, it's essentially

that the individual should not be celebrated for his unique, gifts, but the group should be celebrated for the collective gifts that the individual gets to share, and that's the basic concept. You describe Max Martin's sound, I think, very rightly, as chameleon-like. He's able to adapt both to the artist he's working with and to whatever is the current musical trend dominating the pop market at any given moment. I'm curious if you feel that there is. is nevertheless some distinct profile,

some distinct sonic touches that are a giveaway that let you know, oh, this is a Max Martin song. Does he have some stamp or some signature that might still be detectable? That's a great question. I've actually thought about that. And, you know, I thought about it because I made a medley of like all the hooks from the hits,

the 21 billboard number one hits. and just a three-second hook and put them all together into like an 80-second, like, medley. And so you can listen to them all. And when you listen to them all straight through, you definitely feel like there's a consistency. And, you know, I mean, it's hard to say

that it's actually in the chords or in the melody itself. It's more how the hooks come in the songs and how the songs are structured, around them, the coral hook almost always comes between like 40 and 47 seconds. It's like very regular in terms of, you know, and the older songs, it's a little bit later, but, you know, everything from, like, since you've been gone, it's basically, the coral hooks hit set like 43 seconds. And, you know, it's that old Max Saul, don't Boris get to the chorus. That's the

Max Martin approach. And so, you know, I think since you've been gone, really is the one essential breakthrough pop Max Martin's song because it brought the indie rock sound and the Euro pop chorus of the 80s together into one song. It basically like fused the 90s and the 80s, you know, in like one song. And that's sort of the template, I think. for everything going forward. That's fantastic.

All right, that's beautiful. You've given us some great lines of analytical inquiry to pursue now, and it sounds like we definitely have to investigate since you've been gone as sort of the fulcrum of his pop career. I feel like it is. And also, it's a really cool study in the book, because, you know, it comes from the song MAPS. They were listening to MAPS, like, yeah, yeah, yes.

And, you know, Max was saying, I love this song. I love how it goes to like, you know, intensity of five. Intensity of seven. But then the chorus comes and it goes back to five. And it was driving him totally crazy. And then Dr. Luke said, well, why don't we just put a big chorus on it? And you can actually hear the riff and the song that they build that chorus out of.

That becomes, since you've been gone, and it's no longer an indie song. It's a pop song, but, you know, it definitely, if you hear that, if you listen to the two songs together, you can totally hear where that song came from. So I would say, like, structurally the songs do have a lot in common, you know. But in terms of, you know, melody, they don't really. And, you know, things always, I mean, one of the reasons he's last is he doesn't fall into a regular pattern. He does continue to surprise you. like, in a way you could say like blank space, the actual silence that the song starts with

than that comes after each of the choruses is also a kind of a weird like anti-hook hook. You know, it's like the blank, it is the blank space, I guess. And I'll write your name. John Seabrook, thanks again so much for talking to us. Your book, The Song Machine is in stores now, and it's a must read for anyone interested in the market and the meaning of pop music. All right, Nate. Thanks a lot, ma'am. Attention, Spotify.

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seen some of the reasons for the rise of Swedish pop producer, a certain shyness from celebrity, a certain impulse for collective work, the productive mistranslation of English and the emphasis on sheer, the sheer musicality of lyrics over their sense, and I think as well a healthy dose of genre agnosticism.

Now, Mr. Seabrook was not quite convinced that you could pin down the Max Martin influence in any of his given track. Ah, but we must try. We must try. And I think he did give us a good hint that a place to start would be the song Since You Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson, released in 2004 and produced by Max Martin and one of his many protegees, Dr. Luke. This one really, I haven't heard this in a long time, it really holds up. Yeah.

The song is, as Seabrook tells us, the Genesis was Max Martin and Dr. Luke listening to this song by the indie band, the yeah yeah yeah's called maps good song right and they're just loving the the verse and and the groove and the whole feel of the song that's super high energy rock guitars heavy percussion totally and then seabrook says the chorus comes in and max martin is just like oh they totally missed their chance Right. To just do this explosive, earth-shattering, face-melting chorus. And instead took it from level five to level seven. You know, they should have taken it from level five to level 22.

So they immediately go in the studio and start cooking up their version of the yeah, yeah, yeah's on steroids. Right. And originally, and the finished song, since you've been gone, I think originally is supposed to to go to pink, but she passes on it. Oh. Then it's supposed to go to Hillary Duff, but she can't hit the high notes. Ooh, Hillary. So then it finally makes its way, sorry, Pache Hillary Duff, finally makes its way to Kelly Clarkson,

who I guess is kind of skeptical of it at first, but is convinced by Max and Dr. Luke that this is going to be her breakout hit. Let's start at the chrysalis of this song, the Yeah Yeah's Tune MAPS. I love the intro to MAPS because it's that sort of like Meg White-style drumming. Right. Really raw, really real, in your face. Totally. It's not quantized and perfect.

These high jangly guitars. Beautiful melody that just kind of comes out of nowhere. Yeah, big voice. It just, like, really hits you in the gut. Okay, very cool. Now, let's move over here to Since You've Been Gone, which, again, we know is sort of modeled after this yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, song. The first thing I notice is that I'm getting those jangly guitars,

but they start off a little bit more muted, like maybe they're going to build and go somewhere. Melody is very similar in a lot of ways. A lot of space, right? Big space. She sings a phrase and then gives it a pause. Okay, now let's return to Maps, and this time we'll get to the chorus. It's a nice chorus.

Yeah, I totally agree. That's good. Pretty, pretty good. I believe that's what they call Danny with Faintfish. So, let's compare this Max Martin chorus. Whoa. Boom! In your face.

Yeah. Wow. Let me just pick my face up off the floor real quick. Hold on, let me get the mop. It's kind of melted. I don't want to be the person comparing too closely maps and since you've been gone because I love maps. I love the AAS and it's doing its own thing. It's not a pop song.

It's not a pop song. No, no, no. It's working and it's completely its own artistic statement. So not bashing maps, but a great inspiration because this since you've been gone chorus just lifts you up into the heavens. It's amazing. I think we have a great case study here to look at because we have the source material and then we have Max Martin's produced epic.

And we can start to ask, where has he left his fingerprints to create a pop masterpiece? Exactly. We can go inside the mind of the master. I think one way that he transforms the song into a pop song, the production is a lot tighter and perhaps more nuanced than the yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Their indie aesthetic is predicated on a very feeling of liveliness. In the studio, raw, on tape. Yeah, with all their flaws and imprecisions, since you've been gone, allows for no such deviations from the perfect pop formula. It's polished. It is polished. It is set to a click track. Every note is carefully groomed and auto-tuned.

and probably manipulated by a thousand engineers. Right. This is a pop Frankenstein beautiful monster. Ha. Okay, so we've got a cleaner production, a smoother airbrushed palette. What else? Lyrically, Martin and Dr. Luke have transformed maps into pure pop. Right.

Because the ambiguity present in maps, the vagueness of the lyrics, and the beautiful mystery of what this song is about, that won't fly in a pop song. No. You need to be pretty upfront about what's going on, and this song is as clear as day. Kelly Clarkson wasn't being treated well, but now she's free of this guy,

and everything is great, baby. The lyrics and the music match up beautifully. And it does so in a really wonderfully narrative way, moving from a sort of retrospective, pensive verse into a celebratory chorus. One of the things I see as perhaps a signpost of Max Martin is taking this narrative lyric and mapping on music that carries you from this low point up to a high point. Ah, totally right, because we start in this very muted place.

Right. With literally muted guitars. Yeah. and these short staccato snippets of vocals. Yeah. A very low range, a very sparse texture. So at the end of the first and the second stanza in her lyrics, she says, Since You've Been Gone.

And she does it in a way where melodically is going, yeah, yeah, since you've been gone. And there's this openness, this like, since you've been gone. it's not closed. Right, you'd probably expect it to go, since you've been gone, or something like that. Right, that would be closed. It's like, since you've been gone, relationship over,

nothing more to say here. When she says, since you've been gone in the verse, there's something very sort of indecisive about it, right? Because the harmony moves to a minor chord. Vocal moves to the third of our home key. Yeah, so you're not totally sure how to read that line since you've been gone in the verse, right?

Is it, is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? It's hard to say because it's not very definite. So he starts us off with this really simple material. It feels a little muted. She's reflecting about a past relationship. Where is that taking us? The melody rockets up to a whole new, a sort of stratospheric range.

That note that poor Hillary put in. Oh. I'm so sorry. And we, and at the end of, the chorus, certainly we finally get that resolution. Right. The melody, the since you've been gone that in the verse was ending on this uncertain place of the third finally ends in the place where we want it to, the place that gives us closure and finality, the root.

Since you've been gone. Ah, the closure. Yeah. So now we know what kind of gone we're dealing with here. We're dealing with the good gone, not the bad gone. What we're trying to look for here are these fingerprints of Max Martin, right? And what I'm hearing is just this old school style of perfectly tying together harmony and melody to string you along through a narrative of a song such that when you get that chorus and you end that chorus, you just feel like you've ended on a high point. Yeah, absolutely.

Something you said at the outset that might be a stamp of Max Martin. is this sense of narrative that he's able to capture in both music and lyrics, that you're on this journey, this story, and there's something really captivating about it. Whether it's a story as simple as Hit Me Baby one more time, or as sort of beautiful and nuanced as blank space, either way, once he grabs you, you really have to hear how this song is going to end. And one other thing that I think Seabrook beautifully adambrated for us is this sense of negative space that he's able to use, right? In the verse of this Kelly Clarkson song, there's a lot of silence, which is not something you usually hear in a pop song.

You know, in a pop song, you often want to have as much sort of density as possible. He knows how to let his songs breathe. Exactly, yeah. He's learned to breathe for the first time. Ha ha! Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, my gosh. Look at that.

Talk about intentionality. Learning how to breathe, giving space through this. I didn't even see that until now. Yeah, that's why he's a genius, Charlie. So what have we said? He lets things breathe. He's got narrative continuity. He's a great melody writer.

Do you think we can find these things in his other songs? I think we got to try. I've got one for you. Ooh, this is exciting. I'd like to hit you baby one more time, but instead I'm going to, oops, I did it again. I'm sorry. That was just terrible. Well, we both have a lot to apologize for it today.

Okay, so here's what I want you to do with me I just want to listen a little bit to the chorus and I want to see if you can hear what I'm hearing because I think we're hearing some of that, Max Martin. Just the first line, oops I did it again. Yeah. What are you hearing there? Oops, I'm hearing this minor phrase

that really nicely maps on to the rhythm of the lyric. That's a little curious for me, right? I said we were landing on the chorus and you said, I'm hearing a minor phrase. Feels a little strange. Oops, I did it again, is not some sort of dramatic ballad. We're not talking Adele here. This was a big pop dance song, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so he's starting in a minor place, in a chorus. I think that's not very typical, especially in 90s pop. Yeah, definitely a little odd. I must ask you, why has he done this? And to give you a hint, think about the next phrase. I played with your heart. What happens there?

It sounds like we're moving. I'm not sure if we're still in minor anymore. No, we've moved to the relative major. And just, you know, not to be too wonky here, but basically every key has a major and minor relative. He starts in the minor relative. We've moved to the major relative. So why has he done this?

Talking about intentionality and songwriting. I played with your heart. Yes. So this is like kind of mimicking this. this game that she's playing. Exactly. Because you start in the minor. Oops, I did it again. Almost feels like, oh, I'm sad. I'm sorry.

I can't believe I screwed up. Yeah. And then I played with your heart. They twist the chords into the major. So she's just as we're playing with this sort of harmonic ambiguity or a major or we minor, she's playing with our heart. She's kind of a psychopath in this song. Well, we should be honest.

This is Max Martin here. anyway, so we should be saying he. Right. He's the mad one. Yeah, I see how this is a very martin-esque move here. Right. Because we have this lyric that is totally supported in the story it's telling by these really rapid fire and clever musical changes.

This song is working very effectively. He's built the narrative right into the music. Maybe you can't point to one sound or one chord. No. Or one lyric and say, oh, that's what gives it away that it's Max Martin. It's something more holistic. It's the way he constructs these songs to be these perfectly captivating musical and lyrical stories. Nate, when you were going hunting for Max Martin in your interview with John Seabrook.

I prefer fishing for Max Martin, but please continue. I guess that makes sense off in the Nordic seas. Ice fishing for Max Martin. On your ice fishing trip for Max Martin, you talked about Swedish lyrics. Yes, yes, this is probably could do a whole episode on these. And just a few weeks ago, I got to do a live episode of Switched-on Pop in Los Angeles. I'm sorry you couldn't be there. Very sad.

But I had our friend, comedian and radio host, Chris Duffy, who does the show, You're the Expert on WBUR. Great show. Definitely check it out. I had him sort of as my foil for you. He was your sit-in. I accept. And my question to him, as a non-musician, as someone who considers himself a novice to pop, my question was, name that song, name what's wrong.

So I thought we could all play a little game, go back to that live episode, and see if we can identify these brilliant Swedish pop songs, what they're doing well, but where something in the lyrics is just a little bit off. Okay, let's do it. Thank you. So, Chris, you did this great joke on idioms and ways in which things can be mistranslated. In English, you say, he was born of the silver spoon in his mouth. In Swedish, you say, he slid in on a shrimp sandwich.

Amazing. I love it. I would never want someone to say Chris was born on the silver spoon his mouth. But I would love for them to be like, but he is a shrimp surfer. I would have to be surfing your life on a shrimp. I love that. I love that. My favorite one of your jokes was about the Swedish idiom sliding in on a shrimp sandwich,

which is just beautiful. And it turns out the Swedes have actually taken over pop music. And as good as these Swedish songwriters are, oftentimes, while the music is great, lyrically, they're missing a few items. So I want to play a game with you. We're going to call, name that song, name what's wrong. I love this. So in each case, we have a song either written or sung by a Swedish artist.

Okay. I will both read the lyrics to you and play you the song. Is this going to be the kind of thing where, like, I play this game and then Swedish people banned me from visiting their country? It feels like this might be like on the line. But I'm going to do it no matter what. We'll be equally banned. We'll go to Norway together.

I mean, it's a really expensive country anyway. I probably wasn't going to be able to afford getting there. Okay. They've effectively banned me anyway. So I'll read you a lyric. and I'll even play you a clip. Sure. And my understanding

is your pop background is... Very limited. Okay, great. So we might need some audience participation. I'm going to try to set you up for success. I have low expectations for myself. I've already exceeded them by not crying, so it's great. So here's your lyric.

Did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could be trusted. Did you have to ruin what was shiny? Now it's all rusted. Oh. Did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could be trusted. Did you have what was shining, now it's all rested.

You look very confident. Well, I know that it's Taylor Swift. Okay, I'm certain that it's Taylor Swift. Okay, is this all you had to do with stay? It's called Bad blood. Bad blood. That's all right. But that's the lyric?

Is that the lyric in it? No. Now we have that's a different song by her. Okay, it's on the album, 1989. So I got like, if this was in iTunes, I have like two out of three of the listing, right? Yeah, definitely. You're doing well. Okay.

But what's wrong with the song? One is she's describing a relationship as rusted, but it's not made of iron. The other is... Well, that's a pretty big one for me. Can you read it to me one more time? Yes. So I'll give you a hint. Sure.

Did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could have been trusted. Yeah. Could have been trusted is a strange formation, right? I was thinking that you... I guess that's kind of... So I think the whole thing is that the emphast. is on the wrong syllable.

Oh, yes. Right. And here again, it sort of feels as if someone wrote lyrics in Swedish, and then they're like, okay, now we've got to translate it again, and okay, English,

but the rhythm is completely wrong. Yeah, yeah. All right, so we'll move on. Okay. Okay. We're again in the modern era. Sure. And this might be a little bit more difficult.

I think the lyrics are very clear in this example, so I'm not going to read them to you. We're going to try to guess the song and figure out what's wrong with this lyric. Okay. This we just use for fun. Yeah, I mean, this is like out of a serial killer's diary.

Bodies use them up till they're in little pieces come is a terrifying thing. But it also sounds like maybe they meant to use the word babies. No, it's definitely bodies. No, no, no, I understand. But maybe it would have been like babies, let's make babies would have been like less creepy here. Although little pieces of babies is still bad. Yeah. There's no way it doesn't get weird.

No. Okay, do you know this all on? No. No. Yes, Tovlo, talking body. I've never heard... Tovlo sounds like a kitchen manufacturing company. I've never heard that song.

The lyric after that is not quite appropriate for the radio. So, yeah. We try to keep the explicit off of our podcast. Good job. Okay, so I think what's going on here is they're trying to find a English cliche. And in this case, let's write a song about sex. Yeah. But it sounds...

We were talking the other day about how... what it's like if an alien were to describe what's going on in a scene. And it feels like an alien sort of hovering over and trying to describe two people having casual sex. Bodies, rubbing, bodies making pieces. That definitely feels like that. Bodies are baby making bodies. We just use for fun. Baby making bodies use it for fun.

Yeah, I see that. That definitely feels right. Yeah. Okay. I think your analysis was correct. Thank you. Thank you. That's also the thing that are like a robot alien would say.

Okay, we can keep going. I think your analysis is correct. Mm-hmm. Okay. I don't think you're going to get this one. I'm, based on my track record, that's a safe bet. So, this one was... So far, the only one I got was literally the most famous artist in the world.

And I only got her name. So this one was really big in the clubs in about 2013, and I know that... And I was big in the clubs in 2013, too. Exactly. So this rally is good for me. You might stand a chance. Yeah, yeah. That was my big club years.

If you can remember. Okay. So I'll read this one to you again. Okay. This one's a little bit longer. I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone. I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched it.

I let it burn. I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs. I crashed my car into the bridge. I don't care. You got it or something? I want it. I don't care. You got it.

Audience? I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. You have no idea who the artist is. When I was in the club, so many fans were talking to me, it's so hard. It's so hard. People are like, I'm like,

I'm just trying to listen to the lyrics. But you have no idea who wrote this, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wait. Is this like tattoo? Like that, T-A-T-U, like those Russian girls? You know what I'm talking about? No. You don't know what I'm telling you about.

I know what you're talking about. It's not them? No. Because it's Swedish. Oh, it's Swedish. Yeah. Is it Bjork? Also, she's not Swedish. Abba? I don't know.

Abba is Swedish, but they haven't been around for about three years. Does anybody know who wrote this song? Manufacturers of Volvo? It's iconopopop. Featuring, anybody? Charlie XEX, yes. Charlie XEX? Yes.

Oh yeah, that always feels like a Super Bowl commercial thing to me. Right? I'm like, why is she using Roman numerals? Yeah. I guess she's not. Or is it a he? I don't even know. Okay, so, okay, so I kind of pop featuring Charlie XX, I love it.

Great. This is like, I almost feel like at the end of this, the reveal is going to be like, I take off a mask and I'm an 80-year-old man. Well, of course I don't know young people's music. I still listen on this hand crank radio. Well, maybe you can use your 80-year-old wisdom to tell us. What's wrong about this song? Okay.

Well, I think there's something definitely weird about the verb pushed. Like, she put your shit into a bag and then pushed it. down the stairs? Like, why? Why? I feel like if it's heavy enough that you need to push it, it's probably going in a box, not a bag. A bag is getting thrown. That's definitely a logistical problem there. For sure.

But then it's also like, why does she love it if all this bad stuff is happening? But that wasn't there. I don't know. Okay. Okay. Is there anything going right about the song for you? I mean, I think the song is great. I agree. Like the music is great. That's going right.

But you mean the lyrics there. Let's see. I guess it's hard to crash into a bridge. You probably crash off a bridge. Yeah, that's a really good point. Into a bridge is like you drove, you teaboned the bridge. Which is like, that's a low bridge. Yeah, yeah.

Nate, I've actually got one more lyric just for you. How exciting. I want to go actually back to what we were talking about earlier with Oops I Did It Again. A classic. We already know the song, so we can't name that song. But I want to see if you can name what's wrong or at least a little bit off. Oh, baby. It might seem like a crush.

But it doesn't mean that I'm serious. Because to lose all my senses, that is just so typically me, oh, baby, baby. Lose all my senses? That's not a phrase. I think lose all my senses is a phrase. And I think there is something wrong with that as well because I think it plays into the trope of female hysteria. I actually think that that is wrong by playing into stereotype. But I think that there's another thing wrong here as well.

I must be part Swedish because I'm not seeing the... Oh, right, let me see it. Let me give me one more little hint. It might seem like a crush, but it doesn't mean that I'm serious. It might seem like a crush, but it doesn't mean that I'm... But it doesn't mean that I'm serious. Oh, yeah, because that doesn't make any sense. Crush and serious, don't rhyme, but she sings it, serious, as if to rhyme with crush.

Oh. It doesn't quite work. See, it's so off that when I read it, you can't even get it. Well, I have one for you, Charlie. What do you got? This is, I think, my all-time favorite Swedish lyric from the Backstreet Boys. We've got it going on. Yeah.

Charlie, I keep it ruthless when I get wet. Yeah, just meditate on that for a second. I just really afraid of saying something completely inappropriate, but I think it actually doesn't mean anything. Keep it ruthless when I get wet. Or it could be like free jazz. Like, keep it ruthless when I get wet. I got the crazy wild and aesthetic. Can I just jump in?

So are you saying that maybe if we're looking for the Max Martin calling card, we should also be looking for lyrics that are just completely ridiculous? I mean, I think he's sort of wised up at this point. Okay. But that's got to be a giveaway. Which is why we've created a Spotify playlist of all 21 of Max Martin's number one hits over. the years and listen to these songs and see if there's not some invisible through line connecting them. We can continue to pick apart the hidden craft of Max Martin. Today's show was produced and edited by me, Charlie. And me, Nate. And our logo was designed by Luke Harris. Check out his work

at luke Harris.com. Big thanks to the great John Seabrook. Definitely check out his book, The Song Machine Inside the Hit Factory. And thanks, of course, to Chris Duffy for performance. together. You should all check out his show. You're the expert. It's on iTunes and any other place that you get your podcast. It will make you laugh. It will make you smarter. And we'll be back in two weeks. As always, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.