4 Pop Hits That Reveal Max Martin and Shellback’s Heavy Metal Roots

Max Martin might just be the world’s most successful songwriter of the 21st century. And like his protégé, Shellback, he began his career in a heavy metal band before transitioning to pop music. While Martin has a background in glam metal, Shellback, born Karl Schuster, played in a melodic death metal band.

Videos by American Songwriter

The Swedish duo has transformed the sound of pop music with catchy melodies, over-the-top theatrics, and the meticulousness of heavy metal virtuosos. See if you can spot the heavy metal roots in the tracks below from two of pop music’s most in-demand songwriters.  

“Blank Space” by Taylor Swift

There’s very little about this song that sounds like heavy metal. But it reminds me a little of Mutt Lange’s taut production on Def Leppard’s blockbuster Hysteria, which foreshadowed country music’s turn toward pop and rock in the mid-1990s with Shania Twain. Though Taylor Swift moved away from country music on 1989, “Blank Space” and its stacked gang vocals, rigid drums, and glossy production possess the same kind of math-friendly precision Lange and Def Leppard perfected on Hysteria.

“So What” by Pink

On Pink’s 2008 hit, she sings about being a rock star with rock moves. And she wails with the intensity of a glam rocker at the height of hair metal in the 1980s. But Pink also has punk vibes, and if you recall the origins of hair metal, the anthems of Mötley Crüe and others borrowed heavily from New York Dolls and Sex Pistols. Yet, the rawness of punk doesn’t interest Max Martin and Shellback. They produce with the exactitude of computers, trading human imperfection for earworm hooks that get to the chorus before they bore us.

“Whataya Want From Me” by Adam Lambert

Pink co-wrote “Whataya Want From Me” with Martin and Shellback. It was intended for her album Funhouse, but became Adam Lambert’s biggest hit to date. The American Idol season eight runner-up loses patience with a lover as Martin and Shellback construct a track blending Sunset Strip guitars with the Europop of ABBA. Lambert’s earnest screams pierce the chorus with the kind of towering notes that shredded Jon Bon Jovi’s vocal cords.

“Criminal” by Britney Spears

In another era, Britney Spears’s outlaw love song might be a rock power ballad. With one of those weary-band-on-tour videos with a long-haired bad boy that a girl wouldn’t dare bring home to her parents. As mentioned above, you’ll hear a lot of ABBA in Martin and Shellback’s hits. But the heavy metal roots of the pair always seem present, even when the productions are filtered through modern samples and Auto-Tune. 

Photo by Paul A. Hebert/Getty Images