“I couldn’t be like: ‘Oh, just do it,’” he says. Photograph: Michael WharleyĪs well as getting involved in the auditions and workshops, Martin also recorded the cast album. “So I made a playlist of Max’s catalogue and realised that so many of the songs are about young love … of course Romeo & Juliet came to mind.”īard times … the cast of Max Martin’s new musical & Juliet. “I had hit my head on a kitchen cabinet and couldn’t look at screens or light for a while,” West Read says (he was concussed). Martin had been toying with the idea of a jukebox musical for years, inspired by Abba’s global behemoth, Mamma Mia! If a feminist retelling of a Shakespeare soundtracked by Spears sounds like the work of someone who has just had a bump to the head, well, that is because it is. “We’ve been putting a lot of work into & Juliet and it’s a new field for me, so I don’t mind talking about this.” “You’re about to find out I love talking,” Martin continues, popping a snus (a moist tobacco bag, popular in Sweden) under his top lip. We are joined by the writer of & Juliet’s book, David West Read, who, much to Martin’s delight, has shown up in a vintage Britney T-shirt. One rock star due to get the Max treatment assumed the quiet man he had met was an engineer and asked him when Martin was due to arrive. The way she recorded that song, she added another dimension Max MartinĮver since he earned his first US Top 10 hit in 1997 by co-writing and co-producing fellow Swede Robyn’s Do You Know (What It Takes), Martin has been a self-confessed “studio nerd tucked away in a basement somewhere”. “I just like to stay in the background as much as possible.” When I heard Britney singing I just knew instantly. “I’m not a shy person,” he clarifies as we sit in one of Manchester Opera House’s tiny bars, his accent a mix of Swedish and the Los Angeles drawl of his adopted home.
The hugely ambitious & Juliet – a modern re-telling of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet in which Juliet decides not to kill herself, but to head to Paris in order to live a little – is woven expertly around 30 of these hits, originally written for artists ranging from Celine Dion to ‘NSync, the Weeknd to Pink. He is the man who introduced the imperishable, if occasionally linguistically questionable, choruses “Hit me baby one more time”, “I kissed a girl and I liked it” and “Backstreet’s back, all right!” to karaoke booths everywhere, with songs that were at once dramatic, melancholic and never less than relentlessly catchy. Martin’s 22 US No 1s make him the third-most successful songwriter in US chart history, behind only Paul McCartney (32) and John Lennon (26). Collectively, these have sold more than 150m copies globally, earning Martin an Oscar nomination, five Grammys and the 2016 Polar Music prize (previously won by Bob Dylan and Patti Smith). Twenty-two went to No 1, with 12 also topping the UK charts. Martin has co-written and co-produced 73 US Top 10 singles for the likes of Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry and Britney Spears. It seems inconceivable that someone so unassuming could have dominated pop music for more than 20 years, but the statistics speak for themselves. If you didn’t know whom you were looking for, you would assume the long-haired, 48-year-old Swede, dressed in a black T-shirt, was taking a break from shifting props for that night’s performance of the new jukebox musical & Juliet. E ven in a completely empty theatre, Max Martin manages to disappear, choosing to perch himself on the back row, almost completely hidden in shadow.
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