Pop Michelangelo

A strong part of Denniz PoP’s vision […] was that songwriting should be a collaborative effort; no one was supposed to be proprietary about his work, and Martin has passed these principles onto two generations of songwriters. Songwriters are assigned different parts of a song to work on; choruses can be taken from one song and tried in another; a bridge might be swapped out, or a hook. Songs are written more like television shows, by teams of writers who willingly share credit. In a Swedish TV documentary called “The Nineties,” E-Type describes the working conditions at Denniz PoP’s studio. “I get this feeling of a big painter’s studio in Italy, back in the fourteen-hundreds or fifteen-hundreds. One assistant does the hands, another does the feet, and another does something else, and then Michelangelo walks in and says, ‘That’s really great; just turn it slightly. Now it’s good; put it in a golden frame, and out with it. Next!’ ”

John Seabrook, “Blank Space: What Kind of Genius Is Max Martin?”