From Max Martin to Carole King: 10 secret songwriters behind hit songs
Pop music is a funny old game. What started out as music for the proletariat quickly became an avenue to cash in on common tastes. This has created an odd paradox of monumental musical conquests and corny cheap commercial fodder. For some, the formula for crafting the gems that combine both facets and fly to the top of the charts is a kindergarten science. From Carole King to the mystic Max Martin, over the years, there’ve been some songwriters who just have the canny knack for making hits on a whim.
These days, this trade comes with a dark underbelly. In the modern music scene, where marketability is everything, all too often, songwriters are undervalued and can garner a nominal fee for a chart-topping track. It should be patently obvious to everybody that this creative imbalance is incorrect. After all, it’s far from the case that the singer is always the mastermind behind the music.
A paradigm for this comes from the names in the list below. These songwriting stars have happily shunned the spotlight while exercising a pivotal impact on the music industry from afar. These songwriters truly are the Svengalis of modern music, and it will forever remain a mystery that some of them are unknown names.
So, from the Tin Pan Alley days to Motown moguls and modern stereo masters, let’s look at the creators who have made the art of behind-the-scenes songwriting work for them. Some end up venturing into the spotlight, while others remain mystic names alongside John Lennon and Paul McCartney at the top of the number one hits chart.
10 secret songwriters behind the hits:
Max Martin
Max Martin currently sits behind only Paul McCartney and John Lennon on the all-time UK & US chart-toppers list. That is a monumental feat from an artist who many people might not know by name. However, you will undoubtedly know his pop hits. The Swedish mastermind has brought Britney Spears to the masses, crafted the late-1990s zeitgeist with the Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion and NYSNC, and he was only in his late-20s when he was doing all that himself.
Since then, the humble pop master has penned 25 number ones in total, needed just one more (at the time of writing) to match John Lennon on 26, while ‘Macca’ remains elusive ahead on 32. These hits have amassed Martin a small fortune, with speculation placing his pop booty beyond $260 million. Not bad for someone who has also been able to shun the stresses of fame. Not bad for a humble soul who quips: “I don’t think most people who listen to music are that interested in all the work that goes into making it. It’s the artist you like.”
Carole King
Carole King is a name we all know, or at least we should, thanks to her breakthrough masterpiece, Tapestry. However, her journey from the backroom to the spotlight is one primed for Hollywood perusal. Born to a working-class Jewish family in New York, King fell in love with the radio at an early age and learnt how to play the piano by playing chopsticks to the doo-wop hits being piped out. King almost fell in love with Gerry Goffin at an early age, marrying her college sweetheart when she was 17.
They began making music together and quickly crafted hits. However, the music she put out herself, like 1958’s ‘The Right Girl’, always seemed to flop. So, she continued to pen anthems for others like ‘The Loco-Motion’, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ and even ‘Chains’ for The Beatles. All of these proved to be transcendent hits that still hum in the echoes of society to this day. But King was trapped in the paradoxical position of craving autonomy over her own songs and fearing being another flop if she did edge out from the backroom. However, she defiantly left Goffin behind, went her own way, and offered up some masterpieces to call her own.
Jerry Lieber & Mike Stroller
It’s often easier for the youth to seize the zeitgeist, and the young duo of Jerry Lieber & Mike Stroller had a massive hand to play in shaping rock ‘n’ roll as we know it. Leiber and Stroller were only 19 years old when the prowess of Big Mama Thornton slapped their respective chops. “When we saw Big Mama, she knocked me cold. She looked like the worst, biggest, saltiest chick you would ever see,” Leiber said. So, he raced back to Stroller’s apartment and the pair – filled with the awestruck adrenaline of this new rocking music – rattled off ‘Hound Dog’ in 15 minutes flat.
They then continued to write ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Kansas City’ and a string of Elvis’ biggest hits. Essentially, their finest achievement was shining the mainstream spotlight on the work of black blues music. They themselves said that they had been marginalised when growing up for being Jewish. Thus, they wanted to capture the insolent exuberance of blues at its rocking best and bring that inviolable semblance to the masses.
Lamont Dozier
By rights, Lamont Dozier should be a household name for one song alone: his solo epic ‘Going Back to My Roots’ is one of the most underrated tracks of the 1970s and one of the finest disco anthems ever written. However, it is his work in the backroom at Motown for which he is best known. Alongside the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Dozier pretty much invented the Motown sound and formula. From Marvin Gaye to Stevie Wonder, The Supremes and The Temptations all benefitted from their era-defining formula.
Dozier dominated music like no other, but his mid-’60s barnstorm came from a place of pure artistry. As the late maestro explained: “I don’t think about commercial concerns when I first come up with something. When I sit down at the piano, I try to come up with something that moves me.” That was all the more vital amid the tough slog of industrial Detroit, but in the end, that need for exultation was paired with the rhythm of machinery to make magical music. In the process, Dozier put his name to 14 number ones.
Diane Eve Warren
American songwriter Diane Eve Warren has racked up a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards and nine Academy Awards nominations to skim the cream of her accolades. Dubbed ‘The Original Soundtrack Queen’, the scope of her work escapes her title. While she may be “the song whisperer” because she can somehow pair notes with scenes like a sonic glass slipper for paramount emotional resonance, she can also apply this mystic trait to hitting the right feeling in the field of pop.
The most typifying feat in her arsenal is Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’. Speaking about her track, she told the Los Angeles Times: “It would be a great song to write for Armageddon where it could possibly be the end of the world, and what would someone say to someone they loved with the time they had left. Steven Tyler’s daughter Liv was in the movie, and he was very emotional when he heard the song and wanted to sing it. It became Aerosmith’s first #1 record and the biggest hit of their career.”
Bernard Webb
Bernard Webb is a name most won’t recognise, yet, everybody would recognise his face and hundreds of his compositions. The reason why everyone is familiar with Webb is that it’s Paul McCartney’s former pen name. The Beatle briefly adopted the moniker during the 1960s and used it for a track he wrote for another artist.
While McCartney was happy to give away unused material, he didn’t want the attention attached to them being credited to Lennon-McCartney. The first song released under Webb’s name was Peter & Gordon’s ‘Woman’ in 1965. Ultimately, the press discovered it was McCartney, and he retired the shortlived persona. When asked why he picked Bernard Webb, McCartney once explained: “Why not! It’s a very inconspicuous name. If there are any real Mister Bernard Webbs about, then I apologise”.
Irving Berlin
Shortly after Irving Berlin was born in 1888, his family sought refuge in the US due to being Jewish and moved from the Russian Empire. Living in New York allowed Berlin to embed himself within the music industry and make a living as a lyricist by age 22.
Throughout his esteemed 60-year career, Berlin remarkably wrote over 1,500 songs, including the classic tracks, ‘White Christmas’, ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’, and ‘There’s No Business Like Showbusiness’. Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong are among the names that have taken on his creations. Additionally, Berlin was impressively nominated for eight Academy Awards for his songwriting.
Lukasz Gottwald
Lukasz Gottwald is better known as Dr Luke, who found himself in the headlines because of Ke$ha’s lawsuit, which was later dismissed. As a producer, Gottwald is a one-person hit factory responsible for some of the biggest pop songs of the century. He’s also been nominated for ‘Producer of the Year’ by the Grammys on six occasions.
Hits which have Gottwald’s fingerprints on them include Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone’, Avril Lavigne’s ‘Girlfriend’, Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’, Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’, Marina’s ‘Primadonna’, and many more hugely successful tracks. All it takes is to have briefly turned on commercial radio in the last 20 years to have heard Dr Luke’s work.
Barry Gibb
Barry Gibb rose to prominence with The Bee Gees, but that’s not the full extent of his career that extended beyond the group’s confines. The group remarkably had nine number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and for many years, Barry was writing at such a prolific pace that he often gave them away.
The most notable song he gave away is ‘Islands in the Stream’, which The Bee Gees didn’t think was appropriate, so they handed it to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, who turned it into a country classic. Other anthems from his pen include Samantha Sang’s ‘Emotion’, ‘Grease’ for Frankie Valli, and Teri DeSario’s ‘Ain’t Nothing Gonna Keep Me From You’. Once you combine those with the tracks with the hits he had with his group, nobody can fault Barry Gibb’s songwriting credentials.
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis are a legendary songwriting duo who have been creating hits since the 1980s and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 in the ‘Musical Excellence’ category. The pair of musicians have released one album together, but their brilliance is best expressed through their songwriting CV.
They worked excessively with Janet Jackson when she was at the height of her fame before they progressed to assist Mary J. Blige, TLC, The Spice Girls, Usher, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Boys II Men, and many more household names. While Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis aren’t as famous as those they’ve worked alongside, their songwriting is woven into the fabric of R&B.
