Max reveals most important cause of his success

[Dagge]

In one of his rare interviews, Max reveals the most important ingredient of his success (besides natural talent).

"Let me put it this way – songwriting and producing is 99% about confidence. To me it is, anyway. When you don't have confidence you don't write good stuff. And over the years I've begun to feel that, well, I kind of know how to write a song now. So I'm not worried. And once you're past that you're at least halfway there.
...
(about picking songs)... but it's also interesting how much of it happens by accident, when you'll play something and the artist will go 'whoah, what was that one? Let me hear it again?'. I've always been bad at that – the 'knowing' thing. Knowing when something's good or right.".

I have mentioned this before and Max confirmed it again. There are many potential hit songs laying out there made by unknown talented authors that didn't have that confidence. The confidence that 'this silly melody' could be a hit melody if packed properly. It may even be an idea for a startup, publish your melody and let others decide on its hit/likability potential.

I personally think that is the most important thing that Denniz gave to Max in the early days, the confidence in his 'silly little melodies'. But even I am surprised that he gave this 'skill' 99% importance in hit writing. During early days he also mentioned how he was sure that some songs will be a hit but they flopped. The conclusion may be that a) he was not good at recognizing a hit and b) because of a) he wasn't confident in his melodies. If it weren't for the Denniz, because of a) and b) he would be in the same position as many other talented writers mentioned above, abandoning his own good melodies.

The catch is (if you don't have your Denniz) how to be objective in judging i.e. not to have overconfidence in one's average/corny melodies. A good start may be to compose short melodic phrases and repeat them. A 3-5 tonal melody has less chance to appear bad or corny than an 8 tonal melody.

https://www.popjustice.com/articles/max-martin-interview/