Senior Vice President of Worldwide A&R at Sony Music, 43 years old. A&R is "Artist and Repertoire 'and is part of a record company taking new artists and developing their existing artists.
Began as a 17-year-old in the Danish Danish label Mega Records. Here he worked himself up until his first in 1990 signed a contract with Ace of Base, which sold over 30 million records.
Since he moved to Jive / Zomba Records. Here he was taught by the legendary record company man, south africa driver and billionaire Clive Calder
Jive / Zomba was bought in 2002 for allegedly 3 billion. dollar. Since then he has over a 50/50-owned company with Sony Music worked with names such as Celine Dion, Pink, Rihanna, Robyn, Bon Jovi.
Martin Dodd has also done television concepts - including together with John de Mol, who founded his one billion fortune by inventing 'Big Brother'. Together they made two television concept 'Star Academy', which has since been sold to 43 countries.
In the bedroom is there a half-unpacked suitcase.
Martin Dodd sits at home and relaxed on the sofa at the big panoramic window.
From the 47th floor offers suite room at an amazing view to Manhattan row of shining skyscrapers in the air layer acting nearest neighbors to the luxury hotel The London NYC in midtown. Below you can catch a glimpse of Central Park in autumn colors and 6th Avenues crowds.
The city that never sleeps, is the closest the eternal traveler Martin Dodd comes at a hometown. But when the short residence sessions were at the hotel, it was easier to accommodate up there than to take back and forth to the New Yorker apartment, which is also the closest thing he has on a home.
He has only slept two hours last night. He was a concert that ended with a sunrise, and then there was a business meeting at. 10 this morning. Still, Martin Dodd fresh and enthusiastic. But reluctantly.
"I do not really like to do it here," he says.
Reluctant interviewees from the music business is a bit of a cliché. But just Martin Dodd has nothing but affectation to have it in. This is namely the first interview he gives. Ever. He has agreed to be interviewed on one occasion to tell that it requires focus and hard work behind the scenes at the top of pop music.
His work has in turn led to thousands of interviews with others. A google search on Danish Martin Dodd gives only a handful of hits.
But if you google Britney Spears, gives 99,600,000 hits. It was Martin Dodd, who once helped to "invent" the Britney Spears, who has since become a pop phenomenon.
The same applies to many of the greatest pop artists that surround us today. In the radio, on TV, computer games, on film.
But what is it that the quiet Dane can? The adventure began in the early 1990s with a winning formula.
"I remember that I sat in a park in Amsterdam, looking at these children who were playing and they had baggy jeans and the whole hip hop thing going in style. In the evening I went to listen to r'n'b in a club, but there was no melody, I could stick in. Very few of the r'n'b stuff broke through over the world, but in terms of style, vibe commercial and fashion point of it was there. It lacked just melody lines, "said Martin Dodd.
"So we started with the Backstreet Boys, who at the time we did not really know what to do with. I took them to Sweden and began making records for the purpose. I had started a production company with Denniz Pop, who had made Ace of Base to me and so I just grabbed on to him and we started to record. There we made so Backstreets first album in three weeks. "
hit Factory
The production company named “Cheiron”, and beyond the Swedish popproducer Denniz Pop was a young Swedish rock singer named Max Martin was attached as a producer and songwriter.
He had for years been an apprentice in the Pops studio in Stockholm where they had written a whole arsenal of pop songs.
Max Martin was found to have a rare ability to produce hits.
With this as a musical force began hit factory Cheiron to spray one hit record out after another, while Dodd made sure to find the artists, the right partners and came up with concepts for them.
Backstreet Boys went on to become music history's best-selling boy band of over 100 million. selling album.
Also the then unknown * NSYNC was sent to Sweden by Dodd. Out of the factory was another successful boyband, where a young Justin Timberlake's career started.
"I remember that I sat with Justin when he was around. 14 years of age at the first session of the first * NSYNC plate. These boys had never been outside the U.S.. He had listened to a lot of Scandinavian pop music and, among other things, the things we had done at Cheiron. Then he looked at me and said, "It's really very interesting, because what I do is that you take fast beats, and then put the vocals and lyrics on that are melancholic and almost ballad-like. In the U.S., all up-tempo music equals party texts. And everything that is called depth and melancholy, are always on the ballads. I swap it around. "He was 14-15 years, and I thought 'Wow!' ".
It was during the same period that Dodd met a then only 15-year-old girl from Louisiana.
"We had the song '... Baby One More Time ', which we had done on several occasions. Suddenly there was Britney. She had been part of the TV show Mickey Mouse Club, and she came over to us in New York and did a showcase for us, which was really cool. So we recorded it as the first song, but before we used the 11 months to put the plate up with the promotion, where she played in every shopping mall, you can imagine. "
How did you get staging of Britney?
"We often sits and defines the universe before we begin. With Britney it was something about American culture. But because it is seen from the outside - as you are not American - it becomes a little exaggerated. Especially with '... Baby One More Time ', which was just such a great American, and I almost just think you can do if you're not American. But the schoolgirl uniform, she found even on. Completely. All his image, she even managed right from the start. She had been working on the game since she was betting, bet small. "
How is it to think back on that time in the 1990s, when I could hardly do anything wrong?
"It was a damn fun time. Mostly because it was such a boys club with me, Max Martin and so Denniz who sadly died of cancer some years ago. Since this boy group was huge, was it fun to shoot with a thousand screaming kids in front of the studio. It was very funny. Jo. But even so ... sober. "
He one second intervals.
"Sometimes," he says with a smile before he continued:
"It was always ambitious. There was no time when you sat down and really thought that we had just sold 25 million of the plate. It was not what it was about. It was 'where are we with the next record?' And to have all the time not to lose a step. We had no idea how the world looked like, because we were just in it.
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