Max Martin’s Hot 100 No. 1s as a Songwriter, From ‘…Baby One More Time’ to ‘Patient Zero’
Billboard ·
A look at pop mastermind Max Martin's Billboard Hot No. 1s as a writer, from Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time" in 1999 to today.
Max Martin first hit the Billboard Hot 100 dated Oct. 28, 1995, as cowriter of Backstreet Boys’ first hit, “We’ve Got It Goin’ On,” a foretelling title for both the boy band and Martin.
The group would go on to massive success, and Martin, too. The Swedish songwriter and producer’s history includes an astounding 28 No. 1 hits as a writer on the Hot 100, a run that began in January 1999 with Britney Spears’ debut smash, “…Baby One More Time” (a title that would also prove prophetic). Among his other triumphs, he cowrote and coproduced the No. 1 hit on the Hot 100’s Greatest of All Time Songs retrospective, as announced in 2021: The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights.”
When Martin first reached the Hot 100 as a writer, Taylor Swift was 5 years old. In 2012, their cowrite, also with Shellback, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” became her first leader on the list. As of October 2026, the trio has landed seven No. 1 compositions, through Swift’s “Patient Zero,” her 16th chart-topping song overall. The three worked on all of her 2025 LP The Life of a Showgir l during her The Eras Tour. “When I was on tour in Stockholm, I had Max Martin come out to the show, and I was talking to him, and I was like, ‘I just feel like we could knock it out of the park if we went back in,’” she shared on Instagram upon announcing the album.
“I essentially said to him, ‘I want to be as proud of it as an album as I am of The Eras Tour,’” Swift mused. “And he was like, ‘Do you understand what kind of pressure that is?’ I know the pressure I’m putting on this record by saying that, but I don’t care because I love it that much. It just comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life.”
From Britney Spears to Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and more pop stars in between, browse the gallery below of Max Martin’s catalog of melodic Hot 100 No. 1 hits that he’s achieved as a songwriter.