For subscribers
Reuniting on The Life Of A Showgirl: When Taylor Swift met pop’s supreme hitmaker Max Martin
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
People wait to enter a Spotify pop-up event for Taylor Swift’s album The Life Of A Showgirl in New York City, on Sept 30.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Brian Raftery
Follow topic:
NEW YORK - In August, a billboard in New York City’s Times Square directed passersby to a Spotify playlist with a lengthy title – “And, baby, that’s show business for you” – and a well-known curator: Taylor Swift.
The list featured 22 tracks from the American singer-songwriter’s career, including 2014’s Shake It Off and Bad Blood. Swifties knew the chosen songs had all been made with the help of Max Martin, 54, and Johan Schuster (known as Shellback), 40, the Swedish producers and songwriters who’d worked on three of Swift’s hit albums from the 2010s: Red (2012), 1989 (2014) and Reputation (2017). That trio of LPs had yielded some of Swift’s most daring yet instantly accessible tracks, furthering her evolution from country act to pop superstar.
