Which producer has the most number one hits in chart history?
Most unsung heroes in music history are those who have made the biggest impact.
Think Carol Kaye, Maria Anna Mozart, and Clare Torry, and the list of underrated geniuses is long. But when it comes to producers, somehow there’s a broader range of legends who never got anywhere near becoming household names.
Like screenwriters, producers are usually architects hiding under the blueprint of the main artist. They take a backseat, tending to the ship from the sidelines as the others surge forward. There are a select few who have built a reputation big enough to be familiar names, like Rick Rubin, George Martin, Steve Albini, Brian Wilson, Jack Antonoff, and James Ford, but, for the most part, even the most prolific of producers aren’t really ones you’d conjure in a pub.
Take Swedish producer-songwriter Max Martin, who is one of the most successful in history, having secured 27 number ones on the Billboard Hot 100, third only to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And yet, that fact isn’t exactly common knowledge unless you go looking. What’s an even more interesting story isn’t that Martin earned the most hits; it’s that he sort of fell into the whole thing by accident.
He first started learning the ropes when his band, Alive, was signed to Denniz PoP’s Cheiron Records. PoP saw something else in Martin, who spent some time in the studio working out the ins and outs of what would eventually become an extremely fruitful career milestone. Recalling these moments in 2001, he said, “I didn’t even know what a producer did, I spent two years–day and night–in that studio trying to learn what the hell was going on.”
Which number one singles did Max Martin write?
Martin’s first foray came in the shape of Rednex’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, following which came Ace of Base’s The Bridge. Martin eventually left Alive to work on the Backstreet Boys’ debut album, becoming one of the most sought-after producers in music. Other hits include Britney Spears’ gym floor filler, ‘…Baby One More Time’, Nsync’s smash ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’, which beat out ‘Bye Bye Bye’ in terms of the popularity crown, as well as a string of Katy Perry hits from her peak, including ‘Teenage Dream’, ‘Last Friday Night’, ‘Roar’ and the somewhat iffy ‘Dark Horse’.
Martin has also had a hand in Taylor Swift’s meteoric success, helming mixing on ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ from Red, and big hitters ‘Shake It Off’, ‘Blank Space’, and ‘Bad Blood’ from 1989, which marked her definitive move from country to pop.
Speaking of pop stars, Martin was also behind one of the biggest songs of the decade, The Weeknd’s shuffle craze anthem ‘Blinding Lights’. But perhaps his lesser obvious successes aren’t the ones on paper, but the ones that also tie him to some of the bigger, most celebrated names in history, like how his achievements mirror George Martin’s, or how he’s been awarded Grammys for things like ‘Producer of the Year’.
Yet his impact feels broader than that, in the way he’s inadvertently changed the landscape of pop music forever with his hand stirring the aural pot. All because one day, way back when, he decided to figure out what was what in the studio and see if it went anywhere.
