Shellback Interview - NEW

[Voodoo]

http://cafe.se/4-satt-att-skriva-en-varldshit-taylor-swifts-svenska-latskrivargeni-avslojar-knepen/

[Rex]

What's it about?

[Voodoo]

Just a few music tips. use google chrome, it will translate the webpage for you

[turnaround]

Cool. There is even a longer interview in the printed issue.

Would be very interesting.....

Btw, which studio is that in the first pic? Maratone?

[sweetmelody]

Great, always good to see a new interview from one of the guys. Can someone please post the full article?

[Voodoo]

Great, always good to see a new interview from one of the guys. Can someone please post the full article?

I second that! Yes I think it is Maratone

[Voodoo]

Is Maratone in Max's home in Sweden?

[Rebecca]

Thanks for the article. Yes, please if someone could post the full article that would be great.

I didn't think Maratone was in Max's house.

[the3rd]

Here is the full article (in Swedish): http://cafe.se/johan-shellback-schuster-jag-kunde-inte-slappna-av-jag-satt-bara-och-skakade/



He was a teenage hard rocker in Blekinge when a certain Max Martin discovered his talent. Today he has written more billboard #1s than ABBA and Rosette combined. Cafe's Jan Gradvall meets up with Johan "Shellback" Schuster for a series of rare interviews in his home and the mythical studio.

***
Summer in Karlshamn. During the summer months, every saturday at 10 AM there is a tradition since the mid 1950's. Anyone can hear when it's closing in - PAM-PA-PADAM. PAM-PA-PADAM. It is the Karlshamn band orchestra marching through the streets.

The members of the band looks a little like old-fashioned police officers - white shirts, black ties and uniform caps. Men and women marching through the center of Karlshamn playing clarinet, tuba, saxophones, trombone, flute - all kinds of brass and woodwind instruments.

Lastly are the drummers. In the world of music, drummers usually keep in the background but in the band orchestra they are the stars. With their drums hanging by their hips they are the loudest and most visible. Their snare drums resonate over the rooftops, through the cobblestones and into peoples souls.

It is here, in the row of marching drummers in Karlshamn, that the story of the second most successful pop songwriter in the world begins.

***

Johan "Shellback" Schuster turned 30 this februrary. Very few swedes know his name or what he looks like - the only two interviews he has ever given were for industry magazines but he has had eight (!) number ones on the american Billboard. As a comparison, Roxette had four. ABBA had one.

- I loved the Karlshamn band orchestra when I was a kid, I never wanted to miss one saturday, Johan says. I think I was two when I got my own drum in the stroller. Then I sat there drumming along when the band orchestra marched by.

PAM-PA-PADAM. PAM-PA-PADAM. His interest for drumming was so big that his father gave him a toy drum kit early on. Johan drummed it until it broke. His dad then bought him another one - Johan drummed that one to pieces as well.
-There are movie clips of m when I am two or three when I'm in the kitchen playing with ladles and source pans. Mors lilla olle (traditional swedish song), that type of songs. I don't wanna brag, but you can hear that I could pick out the drum parts to the songs even at that age. My sister hated me for it, she thought I was a nuisance.

Johans father is an electrician, his mother a teacher. At last the Schuster family in Karlshamn, Blekinge, made a significant investment and purchased a real drum kit that would not break from Johans drumming.
That drum kit was constantly in use. That is how Johan "Shellback" Schuster became a musician. When he was 13 he himself became a member of the Karlshamn band orchestra. He then learned to play almost all the instruments ("but I am too bad at piano to be able to play it live") but he will forever be a drummer at heart.

Does being a drummer affect your way of writing songs?
-It does. I think it's an advantage to somehow be able to play drums or at least understand drums, Johan says in an muddy Blekinge dialect. My role models as a drummer going up was Lars Ulrich and Dave Growl. In a way, Metallica and Nirvana played quite difficult music, but the drums made it feel easy.

Johan stretches himself in his living room couch, scratching his thin mustasch before he continues.
-Drums are so damn basic. It has a bigger spot in music than people think. In the band orchestra there are parts when only the drums are playing - the middle marches. In pop music the drums are also a big instrument in the production. You have the kick and the snare here (Johan sketches rings in the air). The hi-hat is here...

With the invisible drawing of a pop song hanging in the air in his living room I am trying to understand. I don't quite get it.

But what is obvious it that for Johan, this stuff is clear as crystal. His brain works this way, every waking hour he processes and analyses music.

His artist name Shellback is fittingly from professor Shellback in the Swedish cartoon Bamse - a logical and technical genius that has a solution for everything. And also a person that sleeps a lot at his workplace and may seem a bit absent.
A more intelligible way to understand how Johan thinks is to listen to his works. Shake It Off with Taylor Swift was together with Megan Trainors All About That Bass the song that dominated the year of pop music in 2014. If you haven't heard Shake It Off a hundred times you are allergic to electricity.

Anyone who thinks there is a formula for pop hit records are a sloppy listener. The songwriters and artists that try to sound like the others on the charts can become successful - for a while - but they soon fall into oblivion.
On the contrary, the biggest songs are those that break the norm, the ones that does not follow any rules other than gut feeling.

Shake It Off (billboard #1 for 4 weeks) didn't sound like any other modern hit song at the time of its release. The song starts with a five second long drum intro - old fashioned acoustic drums - something that is unheard of on commercial radio.

It is Johan Schuster from the Karlshamn band orchestra playing the drums on Shake It Off. It is also Johan playing guitar, bass, keyboard and shouting in the background.

Songwriting on Shake It Off is credited to Shellback, Max Martin (Johan's discoverer and mentor) and Taylor herself.
-Shake It off was the next to last song we recorded for the album. The other was actually Blank Space (billboard #1 for 7 weeks). With Taylor one can work very quickly, sometimes we wrote a song a day. When we met 6 months after our first session we felt likt there was a type of song missing.

How do you know that?
- Basically it's a kind of pleasing frustration. How good everything feels. We're home, we have everything we need. But, at the same time...a feeling of...something missing. Something that breaks from the other stuff. Something more light hearted. Pharrell had just released Happy and that song was on our minds. When we worked with Taylor on the last album, which was the first time she didn't write everything herself, we did We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. It had a different feel than her other songs. it hade a more fun flirty feel to it. We felt that maybe we needed a song like that.

***


The secret to Johan Schuster's success? His publisher and manager Julius "Julle" Petersson mentioned both his musicality and his ability to get artists to relax in the studio. "And, most of all, all the time he spends".

Pop history pause. When Taylor Swift's We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together was released in the fall 2012 it went #1 on billboard for 3 weeks. It was succeeded at the top spot by another song also written by Shellback & Max Martin, One More Night by Maroon 5, that was #1 for 9 weeks.

If Shellback and Max Martin had been given interviews or at least sent out press releases to let Sweden know the uniqueness ow what was happening - three months #1 on billboard, a feat comparable to a dozen olympic gold medals - people would have swam in the Sergels Torg fountain (traditional Stockholmers celebration routine) for months.

-Taylor usually has a solid idea when she comes in, but this time we had nothing. It is also uncommon for Martin and me to work that way. We usually come well prepared to a session. So we just sat there. What the hell do we do now? We started playing music to each other to get reference points. Someone that happened to be me said, how about doing something in the same tempo as Hey Ya by Outkast? Something faster and more drum based?

As we are talking a small dog owned by Johan's girlfriend sits underneath the living room table, trying to psych Johan for some more food. Instead of acknowledging it he keeps telling the story.

-In the studio there was a drum kit set up and ready to go. I went in and played something just for fun. We later on used that very recording for the song. What you hear is played live. We really thought of it as a sketch - all right now we have a tempo to work on - but it often happens that you keep the demo even though it isn't perfect, since there is more feeling in it. Martin was humming something, Taylor was humming something else. There was a mellotron. I found a brass sound and started playing something really bad on purpose (duh duh duh, exactly what is heard on Shake It Off). Martin instantly said: "That is awesome". If he had not said that I would have moved on and tried something else.

The dog tries again to gain some attention, sucks in its cheeks making a Blue Steel.

-What we had didn't really feel like chorus chords, but just as we were packing up for the day Taylor wrote a falling melody that sounded really hooky. We still didn't know what it was. Is it a chorus? A verse? Me and Martin listened to it in the car on the way home and we were shaking our heads. Is this good? Is it shit? The next day after we had slept on int, which is the best thing you can do, we realised that we had been humming it all morning. The rest of the song wrote itself very naturally. Taylor wrote the lyrics in 30 minutes.

It is an incredibly clever lyric, a comment to her life situation as a tabloid target.
-She is a hell of a writer, personal and broad at the same time. And the speed of it is unreal. I don't get how she does it. If I was to write about my life it would be the most boring lyric in the world (starts singing the Shake It Off melody): "I go to the studio every day..."

Does it usually happens that you play all the instruments?
-Uh-uh (nods). Martin also plays keyboard and sometimes guitar. We both write melodies and choose sounds together. But usually I get to play all the instruments by no other reason than that it's the fastest way. We don't really think all that much about who is doing what. Thats what's awesome about Martin, there is never any prestige.

Within Swedish music journalism there is no tradition of focusing on melodies. Songs that top the charts are rarely praised by critics. Within american music journalism, where there is a long tradition back to Broadway and evergreens, things are different. When Village Voice had their yearly vote, where 160 of the leading journalists in america participates, Taylor Swift's Blank Space was the third highest voted song, Shake It Off the fourth.

You don't have to like these songs - but they are future evergreens, songs that will be a part of melody radio for decades.

***

In the album art for Taylor Swift's album 1989, the by far best selling album in modern times, where Johan and Martin wrote eight songs, there are polaroids where Taylor, Martin and Johan are having fun in a Los Angeles studio.

How did a long haired guy from Karlshamn - with a background in the Karlshamn band orchestra and later on in hardcore and death metal bands, end up here - at the front row of modern pop history?

It is a long story. So long that it deserves a Chartreuse.

These past years when I have met Johan at different industry galas, every time he says:

- Come along, we have to get a chartreuse.

Chartreuse is a french liquor brewed off a 400 year old secret recipe by chartusian monks in the south of France. The liquor is made on 130 different herbs. The green kind, which is the one Johan is interested in, contains 55 percent alcohol and burns your throat so much it feels like drinking a green smoothing iron.

This time we are not out and about, we are at Johan's place.

-Now you will see what our choices are, Johan says, crouching down in the kitchen opening his wine cooler. The purpose of a wine cooler is just that, to store and cool wine, but not in the case of Johan. A part from two dark christmas bears it contains antique bottles of chartreuse that he purchased at liquor auctions.

He holds up a flask that looks like it came from the bottom of the mediterranean sea.

-This one is from the 1930s.

Finally he chooses one from the 1970s.

This is also a special day. It is chartreuse-Wednesday.

Every Wednesday Johan and his friends, most of them songwriters and producers, meet up and drink chartreuse. They all work super hard, and to have a day a week scheduled becomes a way to hang out and leave the studio.

Today it is the 94th chartreuse-Wednesday. It becomes a relaxed day in front of a soccer game starring Zlatan on the TV. (I later get reports from the 100th chartreuse-Wednesday. It is not a relaxed one. The gang goes to 6-7 different bars in Stockholm and drinks a 55% chartreuse at every one.)

Johans friends starts to drop in, ringing the doorbell as they arrive. Zlatan is watching over us from the giant TV screen. Zlatan and Johan know each other. When Max Martin made his version of Du Gamla Du Fria (Swedish national anthem made for a Volvo advert) Johan was the one to record Zlatan in Stockholm.

Zlatan says about Johan:

-Schuster, haha, he is awesome.

The people sinking down into the couch belong to the Wolf Cousins - another reference from the Bamse cartoon. Two years ago Johan and Martin started mentoring 9 songwriters aged around 28-29 at Roslagsgatan in Stockholm. Today they are all part of the world elite.

Within Wolf Cousins are the writers behind songs like Problem by Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding's Love Me Like You Do from Fifty Shades Of Gray and Tove Lo's Stay High.

-Cheers!

They all down their shots with over 40 years old liquor. Tom Waits and ZZ Top has sang about chartreuse. In a Tarantino movie there is a line "Chartreuse, the only liquor so good they named a color after it".

Joining this chartreuse-Wednesday is also Julius "Julle" Petersson, music publisher and manager for Wolf Cousins, one of Johans oldest friends and a key figure in the story of how Johan made it from Karlshamn to writing songs to artists like Taylor Swift, Pink, Maroon 5 and now Adele and Adam Lambert.

Johan wrote his first songs when he was eight years old. A friend had a keyboard at his house. Together they made songs with "funny rap" inspired by Just D and recorded it on cassette tapes.

-I remember many of those songs.

In middle school he was a skater, going to local concerts at the rec center that played RATM-covers. Rage Against The Machine became his favourite band. When he was 13 he got his first guitar. He learned by figuring out the chords in Nirvana songs. With some friends he created his own band, played "wannabe skate-punk" and wrote his own riffs. At the same time Johan made his own recordings at home where he played all the instruments himself.

-Typically me being a control freak, everything is exactly the way I want it. I had a crap cassette player that had two slots on it. I learned that If I played one of them while recording the other one while the mic was plugged in, I could add things to the recording time and time again.

But degrading the sound quality every time?
-Horrible sound quality! But I didn't get that back then. I had no real equipment until I was 16. Then ABF (the workers education association) helped me rent a space and I got money to buy drum mics and, you know, that kind of stuff. That's when I could start recording for real with Logic (a computer music program).

Johan started playing drums in a band from Asarum, the part of Karlshamn where he lived. The band was called The Distorted Pilot Programme and was inspired by At The Drive-In, an influential 90's post-hardcore band from El Paso, Texas.
The Distorted Pilote Programme entered into the rock band competition Musik Direkt. It was a success and they won the district final in Blekinge.

That is, to this day, the biggest rush I have ever experienced. To be number one in the US is abstract. There is no Stanley Cup-moment where you get to carry the prize. You just get a phone call: "Now you guys are #1 in the US again, you have three songs in the top 5..." Like okay. What am I supposed to be the happiest for? The #1? Or the 3# that I made by myself? But winning Musik Direkt in Blekinge and going straight to the nationals, that was huge. I still shiver when I think about it.

After the win the band were interviewed for BLT (Blekinge local newspaper). The journalist meets up with the band in their rehearsal space in Asarum. Equally as huge as the win in Musik Direkt is that the band just got a gig opening up for the Kalasturnén (Party Tour) in Karlskrona.

Despite being a drummer Johan manages to speak up in the relatively short interview. The question about the bands odd name gets to conclude the interview. Johan Schuster answers:

- If a band can be named Neutral Milk Hotel, then damn sure we can be called The Distorted Pilot Programme.

During his teenage years Johan made friends with Julius "Julle" Petersson.

-When I met Johan he was a weird guy, Julle Says when we meet up at a local restaurant where him and Johan often meet for lunch, a few weeks after the chartreuse-Wednesday.

-He was from Asarum, I was from Mörrum (even more hillbilly). We met at the main high school in Karlshamn. Johan was one of the first intellectual people I met. He opened up a new world for me. He knew things, he was straight edge, could play every instrument, was the best drummer in town and got a lot of girls at the same time. He had a confidence that was displayed in his music. There and then he was the best in town. Julio had a sister 12 year older sister, Jenny, that had moved to Stockholm as she was together with Martin Sandberg, known to the world as Max Martin.

Even back then, in the early 2000s, Max Martin started getting recognition as the world's most successful pop writer - even through nobody in Sweden know what he looked like - with two billboard #1s (Britney Spears ...Baby One More Time (1999) an N'Sync It's Gonna Be Me (2000). Today Max Martin has written 19 billboard #1s, more than anyone in history after Paul McCartney (32) and John Lennon (26). Julio was right in between his best friend in Karlshamn and his world famous brother in law in Stockholm. When Julle knew the width of Johan's talent he had the naive thought that maybe Johan and Martin could collaborate somehow. The person hesitant to the idea was - Johan.

-Johan said he hated pop, something I didn't really believe he did, it was just the cool thing to say, Julle says.

Pop music told me absolutely nothing, Johan says. I though, it has to be the simplest thing in the world? Three chords and "baby baby baby" and that's it. Why would I do that?

Despite this, Julle decided started to send some examples of Johans music to Martin.

Johans band The Distorted Pilot Programme was dissolved when the members moved to different parts of the country. Johan had begun to know the band The Shattering from Karlskrona that played "extreme death metal and was so fucking young". They decided to start a new band together. Johan became the singer in Skörda, that played music inspired by Refused, a hardcore band from Umeå, and Breach, a hardcore band from Luleå.

-The drummer was 15 years old, the sickest musician ever, he didn't own a drum kit, instead he practiced on his pillows at home.
The summer of 2006 Skörda played the demo stage at Hultsfred (big Swedish rock festival) The band is documented online. It sounds good. On the website Rockfoto (Rock images) there are pictures with the lead singer Johan in full blast, jumping high up into the air and rocking from side to side. The band looks amazing: all members long haired with khaki-colored pants and read armlets.

[the3rd]

(Continued.)

***

Photo of Shellback from February 2015 - in the studio in Stockholm where him and Max Martin is working. Johan Schuster, 30, is the best kept secret of Swedish music. Among the artist he has written for are Taylor Swift, Maroon 5, Pink, Ariana Grande and Adele - but few knows his name or what he looks like.

On a fall school break Julle and Johan went up to Stockholm to live with Julles sister and Martin "Max Martin" Sandberg.

-Martin picked us up at the central station, Johan says.

I think Martin instantly liked him but also thought he was incredibly annoying, Julle says. He questioned everything with his damn confidence and his quirky manners. But we had a lot of fun in the big city. We saw The Latin Kings (Swedish pioneer hip-hop band) at Mondo, that was awesome. We met the singer of Blindside (christian hard rock band) who impressed Johan a lot, even though he might not admit that today.

The second time they med Johan told Martin how he recorded his music, in a ping-pong celler in Karlshamn with primitive equipment. Martin listened but said nothing. As a surprise he shipped new equipment to the Schuster familys house.

Martin, who himself has a background in hard rock, always took the time to listen to Johans music that his wife little brother played to him. This while he wrote music to the worlds biggest pop stars.

When Johan was 19 Martin said to Julle:

-It would be fun to hear what it would sound like if Johan tried to do pop music.

Johan accepted the challenge.

My idea was that I would show Martin how fucking easy it is to do pop music, Johan says. Instead he was the one schooling me: "This is kind of good, but maybe you shouldn't have a minute long intro?". I was cocky, talked back to him, but every time i tried his suggestions the songs became better. He was always right.

Johan and Julle have a birthday tradition. It started when they were 16. On his birthday Julle gets a specially written joke song from Johan. The first one was called Julle 16 you're a mean sex machine. Other birthday songs had titles like Julle min lilla blomma (Julle you're my little flower) and Julle vem vill du ha (Julle who do you want).

When Max Martin got to hear Julles birthday song on his 21h birthday he jumped in his seat.

-Wait, what is this?

For the first time he was really impressed by a song from Johan.

Knowing that I did a somewhat more serious pop song called Slacker, Johan says. When Martin heard that one he called me up saying this is super interesting. "How about coming up to Stockholm to make a demo?". This was in november 2006. I was 21. The idea was for me to come there temporarily. There never was any demo, but I managed to get a internship and stayed. Martin said "Sit in this chair and shut up. You can make coffee, get food, and just sit there and learn". So I sat there looking trying to keep quiet. Robyn came to the studio, E-Type came. I started feeling, shit, this is fun, I don't wanna go home.

As an intern Johan was probably the worst one Martin ever had, Julle says. He did't know the meaning of it. Martin said that Johan, whose job was to serve others, already on the second day had said to Martin on his way out "Uh...can you get me some lunch on the way back?"

Johan also become infamous for falling asleep. While Martin was working his meticulous ways - in order to become satisfied, mixing a song could take two weeks (actual example: Oops! I Did It Again, Britney Spears) - Johan sat in the chair behind him sleeping. His nickname Shellback (from the off-and on sleeping professor Shellback) started to become relevant.

***

Around the millennium when Max Martin figured the Cheiron-sound had become predictable the Cheiron studio at Fridhemsplan closed up shop. The music world was shaking its head. How could someone close down a studio that right then and there was the most sought after in the pop world?
But Max Martin, who had foreseen that it is about constant change and development, moved on to a new studio, Maratone, in the south of Stockholm.

After a few years there Max Martin bought a house in Lärkstaden in Stockholm. A big house right among the embassys that he had rebuilt to a combined house and studio.

If Batman had been a pop producer his studio would look like Max Martin's. It is mandatory to take off your shoes when you enter. Everywhere there are soft carpeting.  Discrete and secret. When you get to the actual studio there are all kinds of vintage amplifiers, vintage guitars - everything that a subscriber of a music magazine would dream of.

During the two years the house was being completely renovated Julle and Johan got to live there for free.

-Johan slept among moving boxes in what was previously the steam room, Julle says. You had to crawl to get in there. He would lie there in the mornings vomiting into a plastic bag if we had partied the night before. Which we often did. For two 20-year old guys it was an amazing time. We had the whole house to ourselves, we could have parties in the 700 square meter mansion where you did not need to care for anything.

After his first month as an intern at Maratone Johan went on for two months to tour Europe with a melodic death metal band from Karlshamn, Blinded Colony (still active as The Colony). A night backstage somewhere in Austria he wrote a rock song on his friends Flying V-guitar, somewhat as a joke, with a very catchy riff.

I thought, shit, what an ugly and strange Deep Purple-type riff. But there was something there. I recorded it on my phone to avoid forgetting it.

When Johan came back to Stockholm he recorded a demo on the song where he, as usual, sang himself and played all the instruments. The lyrics were about being a rock star "So, so what? I am a rock star, I got my rock moves..."
Then things escaleted quickly. Martin played Johans demo to Pink who loved the song. Pink completed the lyrics, Martin made a few changes including making hip-hop style beat, but Johans demo is almost identical to the song, So What, that a few months later exploded on the radio.

So What become number one in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Israel, Germany, New Zealand, Schweiz, Indonesia, the UK and most importantly, the US.

-We went to LA, Johan says. Pink would premier the song at some kind of MTV-event. I was up in the VIP-area and had still not quite understood what was happening. Then Pink came out and did a huge performance. Of my song! I just stood there with tears in my eyes.

While we're listening to his demo of So What, blasting from his laptop. Johan looks down into the floor and adds:

-That is a strong memory.

He continues:

When So What was created I had also matured in my musicality. I had started to listen to pop and really starting to like it. What was especially intriguing was that i realised, contrary to my previous beliefs, how crazy hard it is to do pop. To make technically advanced death metal is easier. There are no rules there. It's just supposed to be heavy and difficult. But in pop music there are a whole lot of rules that has to be followed. My sister and my mother has to be able to like the song. When I realised what a challenge that was, that's also when it became really fun.

When did you start receiving money from So What?
-That kind of thing takes a while. There is about a year delay until you get money from a song. But I already thought I was rich. I got 20 000 SEK a month as Martin's assistant. To work with my hobby! I was king. I was home! I also got paid 5000 SKE per song when I played various instruments on Martins stuff.

At the time when So What was conquering american radio Johan walked around a department store in New York with Max Martin, Tom Talomaa (co-founder of Cheiron) and Martin Dodd (Max Martin's manager).

I found a really awesome hoodie. But looking at the price tag it was 3000 SEK. I put it back. The others wondered why I did not buy it. I told them I couldn't afford it. Martin Dodd looked at me and said "You are out of your mind. You're number one on the billboard charts". Tom grabbed his wallet and bought it for me. I still have it. About a year later, when the first payout from So What came it was 700 000 SEK, and that was still just a small part of the total money generated from the song. Suddenly having 700 000 SEK on my bank account was hard to grasp.

What brand was the hoodie?
-I don't know.

***

Johan lives in a huge apartment in the center of Stockholm. At the same time he is preparing and even more huge apartment that he will be moving into.

The most successful songwriters make as much money as the biggest soccer players. In both cases the money is not the what drives them. After the first millions the passion is what keeps one going.

As a journalist for 30 years I have interviewed many, many Swedish pop musicians. I have never met any artist and songwriter that is big in Sweden that never at any time has not tried their luck abroad. Their songs are sent around to publishers and pitched to other artists. What unites them all is that they fail. To become a successful songwriter with billboard #1s - a career everyone in the music business are dreaming about - something more is required. Something that is difficult to point out.

Why did Johan of all people make it? I ask the person the should know, Julius "Julle" Petersson. He says that Johan has has the "worlds best Svenne-ears (common man ears)". Both him and Martin sends their songs to Johan when they are done. Nobody else has the ability to say weather a song is a hit or not.

Julle never played any instrument, but his ears have not gone by unnoticed in the music business. Except being a publisher at Warner/Chappell and a manger for Wolf Cousins he also has a third job in the US, as a consulting A&R (talent scout) for Warner Brothers Music.

-I have my theories about why Johan made it, Julle says. First off he has listened to more kinds of different music than others, music from completely different genres than the one he is working with. He has an incredible music memory, he can refer to and pick from so many sources. He also has had a mentorship (Max Martin) that enabled him to leap many years ahead.

Julle flaps the silverware in the air.

-He is also incredible with artists in the studio. Johan has his quirks but can put on a charm that makes everyone feel relaxed in the studio. That is not to be underestimated. All artists are insecure. He also has a hit-friendly demo voice. Just like Martin (who also sings on all his demos) the demo sometimes sound so good that it is better than the finished product. Julle wipes his mouth.

And most of all: all the time he puts into it. You can't get way from the 10 000 hour rule, it applies. Johan had reached his 10 000 hours already back in Karlshamn.

***

Ever since So What with Pink became his first billboard #1 in the fall of 2008 Johan has been working super hard in the studio. Perhaps too hard. The following 6 years Johan never had one vacation. He worked seven days a week, usually so long hours that he slept in the studio. The first time he realised something was wrong was 3 years ago.

-Martin called one night from his studio in LA. He asked if I could just run to the studio in Stockholm to send him some files off the computer. I said "Yeah, sure no problem". But when I got up from the bed I couldn't. I was so out of it I couldn't move.

The best song written according to Johan is the hymn Gläns över sjö och strand by Alice Tegnér, another Karlshamn native. When he wants to wind down he listens to that one and christmas music, even when it is not christmas. With the christmas tunes of Peter Jöback in the background Johan talks about his diagnosis, fatigue syndrome.

This summer I was going on vacation for the first time in 8 years. I worked my a** off with the Taylor record to finish it before summer. When it was done I took five weeks off. One week we were in Italy, living fancy with an unreal view over the mediterranean. But I was unable to relax. I just sat there shaking. When I came home I went to a psychiatrist and a doctor and got my diagnosis. Between October of 2014 and February of 2015 Johan has almost never been to the studio. He has been unable to. The stress comes back, the heart starts pounding, his body is telling him no. When we have been talking on the phone, texting or just like:ing on Instagram, I have seen him spending time with his parents in Karlshamn, feeding ducks with his mom, taking long walks, sleeping in the afternoon, playing FIFA and "learned how to say no".

In February he went back to the studio to do a project that completes a large circle. Johan is now working with one of his old idols Refused, the world most respected and political hardcore band. Refused quit back in 1998 with The Shape Of Punk To Come, where the music lived up to that album title. They were later reunited in 2012 for a number of gigs. This is their first time recording new music in 17 years.

-Refused is one of the most important bands in my life. I met them in 2013 when we both received the government price for music export. I was super nervous and feared for them to think I was a geek.

Refused quit when Johan was 12. He saw the live the first time the band was reunited - standing in the very front.

- It is, for real, the best thing I've ever seen. I was crying and got kicked in the face three times. It was wonderful. Last summer David Sandström of Refused contacted Johan asking if he wanted to work with him. Johan was too exhausted to say yes, but he asked them to send their demos. He listened to them back in his room in Karlshamn among posters of RATM and Refused.

-It felt unreal and beautiful to listen to new Refused songs there where everything begun.

One of the songs was 8 minutes long and in fifth time, a bit jazzy. Johan recorded his own version and transformed it into a super heavy, three minute hardcore song. That is how Refused plays it now.

-Finally I can work a bit like Rick Rubin, Johan says. I come over to the studio, listens a bit, says something and then leaves after half an hour, haha.

He says it on the phone, but I can hear that he looks relieved.

Text Jan Gradvall
Photo Daniel Roos

[Voodoo]

Thank you so much!

[bugmenot]

I want to hear demos that better than released songs...

[sweetmelody]

Great article! Probably the most info on Johan to date. Looks like he's burning out though and I hope he stays healthy.

[ShockdioN]

I want to hear demos that better than released songs...

me 2

[j.fco.morales]

Thank you for this!

I'd love to hear Max's demos.