Need To Ask All The Smart/Musical People Here...

[RoyFan]

Some people here are really good at pointing out commonly repeating elements in Max's melodies and patterns he uses.

Does the chorus of "who knew" seem Max-Like to anyone?  with a melody of his in another song as a reference maybe?

Btw - i'm referring not to "if someone said....etc" (pre chorus) , rather the "i knew, better, still you said forever.... etc"
I know when him and Luke write together they both do melodies but this part of the song is stumping me as I don't hear any Luke or Max patterns in it

The verse and pre chorus are very obviously Luke and Max respectively

[nanofives]

The most obvious thing I can point out is that Max changes his sound periodically, like when Cheiron closed, when he tried to do something after Britney didn't do well with overprotected, then Luke came, then Shellback came and now all of the Wolf Cousins members came and now Max's sound is different from like 3 years ago.
Latest single into you of ariana references a lot of that synth that I've heared in cool for the summer, which I don't know if he adopted that from ilya or Ali. lately with shellback I can reference that heavy bass from just like fire or can't stop the felling.
The point is that you can see things in common belonging to a certain Max era or a specific partner. Other people can see some relation with the musical progression of chords but I don't see that.

[RoyFan]

The most obvious thing I can point out is that Max changes his sound periodically,

Yep agreed!  All the great producer/writers are chameleons.
The reason I asked is instinctively I think there's 2 major things telling me that chorus tune wasn't his on that particular song though the pre-chorus is extremely him melody wise.

But I don't always hear the patterns he goes through so I figured I'd post here.  A part of the chorus to "who knew" is actually extremely similar to a small section "please don't leave me" by Pink - but I think that was him trying to "top" who knew with shellback and being influenced by the chorus of "who knew" - just a hunch

[georg_e]

All I know is those two wrote some GREAT songs together....."Who Knew", "Everything I'm Not" 
"U Make Me Better", on and on. Right up to early Katy Perry......Something special about songs where there's just two writers (maybe three, if artist contributes). Such a damn shame, really, everything that's happened since then with Dr. Luke......would have seemed totally unbelievable back in
2005-6.......

[nanofives]

If you try to look and trace whose sound belongs to who... I'd say that everything started with Luke, he seemed to be the main influence of Max's sound after Kelly Clarkson, he did tried on his own with Per with songs like Stand By Me (Darin) but didn't seem as catchy as the pop-rock sound of The Veronicas or Bo Bice.
After that the evolution it's pretty clear. Before that it seemed to be quite confusing on how with no hit between 2001 and 2004 changed something like Overprotected to... Since U Been Gone.
Another thing... They share a lot, they share a lot of instruments and arrangements, you could see something that started with luke but then Max brought that on his own. That makes things even more confusing to trace.
The most obvious thing is the latest change max did with the Wolf Cousins, and they really changed the game to Max again.

[j.fco.morales]

I love these Max+Luke songs.

They did amazing songs together.

[RoyFan]

Yes, the ones he did with Luke are definitely among his best.  "Break Free", I assume his melody and Zedd's track, is one that I put in the same league cause of Zedd's ability with chords/arrangement and Max's with topline.

"Who knew" overall isn't that confusing really, like all of their songs it's Luke's chords and definitely his verse melody and definitely Max's "if someone said...", the only thing stumping me somewhat is the actual chorus.
"I knew, better" - someone made a good point maybe that particular part of the melody doesn't sound totally Luke or Max cause it was an initial idea of 1 of theirs that the other molded..that's probably why.


Btw, just realized that Taylor Swift's melody of style that part that goes "we never go out of style, we never go out of style" is exactly the same as the bridge melody to Kesha's "Come On" -