Thank You Max Martin
To me, Max Martin is the greatest pop songwriter of the past twenty years. His songs are the soundtrack to my teenage years. I was impressed to see that Max was with the Backstreet Boys at their Hollywood Walk of Fame induction. I thought it was a wonderful tribute to the group that started it all with him. I was then inspired to look back at my favorite Max Martin songs growing up, all released before 2000. Some of my absolute fondest memories…
5. “Quit Playin Games with My Heart” - Backstreet Boys
Besides the video being absolutely 90s gold, the song is so infectious. I can still remember this song playing at my friends pool party birthday in 8th grade.
Very close, but I had to choose this over “…Baby One More Time”. The day ‘Oops…I Did It Again’ came out, my dad picked me up from basketball practice after school. I made him stop by Tower Records to pick up the album. I immediately went home, ran up to my room and listened to “Lucky” about 100x’s in a row.
In 1998/1999 ‘enhanced CDs’ were the big bonus that came along with purchasing an album. I completely wore out Nsync’s debut CD by playing it over and over in my computer to watch the “I Want You Back” video. I just couldn’t get over that I could play the video on my computer.
2. “I Want It That Way” - Backstreet Boys
The greatest pop song of all time, enough said. Oh yeah and also a girl from my high school’s sister was in the video, we were all envious.
While “I Want It That Way” is the greatest pop song of all time, “Show Me Love” is my favorite pop song of all time. I rediscovered this song in college, circa 2004. How I lost track of it, I’ll never know. I can still listen to this song on repeat and never get sick of it. I think it’s the combination of Robyn’s tone and R&B edginess she carried at the time. Regardless, this also made me a lifelong Robyn fan.
