Andreas Carlsson Wrote the Soundtrack to a Generation

Now he wants to give the instrument to everyone.

There is a version of I Want It That Way that almost nobody has heard. It has the same melody, the same production, the same band, but with lyrics that made complete sense. A label executive commissioned it after getting cold feet about the original — too vague, too strange, no clear meaning. A second video was shot at the same airport. Millions of dollars were spent. “One of the Backstreet Boys said: it’s the nonsense version or there’s no band.” They won. Andreas Carlsson, the Swedish songwriter who co-wrote the original with Max Martin in the late 1990s, tells this story as if describing a near-death experience he is still slightly amused by.

He has told versions of it before, but the moral never changes: the thing that works is rarely the thing that makes sense. It is the thing that feels true — especially when no one can explain why. Carlsson has spent thirty years being professionally right about this. Over three billion streams, songs for Britney Spears, NSYNC, Katy Perry, Celine Dion, and Paul Stanley. Now, at 52, he is CEO of Hyph, a music creation platform he describes as “a virtual Lego box” — an app that gives anyone access to professionally recorded stems and the tools to build original, copyright-protected songs in real time, without a studio, a producer, or thirty years of instinct.

CHRISTIAN BRACHT You literally grew up on a tour bus — your father was a musician and had seventy shows the summer you were born. When did music stop being play and start being work?

ANDREAS CARLSSON There was a specific period in my career when I was expected to drive multi-million pound campaigns. Bands in the US needed to sell tickets, merch — everything based on songs we were writing at the time. That got heavy. But otherwise music has always been fun. It’s always been play and a great way to decompress. Now, I’m working on a musical, and I think I have more fun than I’ve had in my entire life. I really enjoy it because I love writing music from the heart. And that’s the thing about play. You don’t write music to prove something, but because it’s the only thing that feels completely honest.

CB You’ve written some of the most-played songs in history. Yet everyone will tell you the music industry is broken. What’s actually broken — the music, or the system around itself?

AC About twenty years ago, I remember sitting in my office, very fat and happy — gold records and awards coming in. You think you’re invincible. And then this young guy from the label pops in and puts a little piece of plastic on my desk. I said, “What is that?” He said it’s called an MP3 stick. I said, “What’s the payment model?” He said it’s free, it’s called streaming. That was a turning point, because what music did was push two things that became even more relevant than music itself: mobile phones and the internet. Now, in 2026, another generation has grown up in a me-centric world. Our attention span is about eight seconds. That’s why songs on Spotify have no intros any more — if the chorus doesn’t hit immediately, you’re out of the game. The next phase is moving from passive consumption to participation — to play.

CB I Want It That Way is one of the most played songs of all time, and no one can explain what it’s about. Not even you. What does that say about how music actually works?

AC Max Martin and I were living in the same building in Stockholm. One morning he knocked on my door with a dictaphone and played me: “You are my fire, the one desire,” and a chorus. I said, “Give me more.” He said, “That’s all I have — please work on it.” I did, and it turned out quite good, but then we got to the second verse and he said, “Why don’t we just make it a question? Am I your fire?” And suddenly, combined with the chorus, it was complete nonsense. But it felt extraordinary. The record label had a crisis — Clive Calder got cold feet, flew Mutt Lange to Sweden, they rewrote the whole thing, shot a second video at the same airport for another million dollars. And then in the meeting, one of the Backstreet Boys said: “It’s the nonsense version or there’s no band.” They won.

CB We have become a society of consumers — in almost everything. You believe that era is ending. Why now?

AC The pyramid of power has shifted because of social media. It’s content by the people, for the people. Einstein said something interesting — when the technical aspect surpasses human interaction, the idiot will win. I’m not calling anyone an idiot, but his point was that the masses become the geniuses. Somebody can hold up a mobile phone and get more traction than Steven Spielberg. Brilliance may not be the deciding factor anymore. And with that comes a downside — maybe there won’t be another John Lennon, another Prince, because the financial infrastructure won’t support it. But maybe the new community doesn’t need that. Maybe they prefer a participation economy instead of being passive consumers. Everything becomes multi-dimensional, and I think music grows tenfold because of it.

CB You want to make music as accessible as a selfie. But a selfie is also, in some ways, the end of photography as a serious art form. Doesn’t the same risk apply to music?

AC I’m worried every day. But if I see a tsunami coming, I’m going to be the first one to grab a surfboard, make sure there’s enough wax on it, and ride it like it’s never been done before. Technology always wins. And there’s something fundamentally human about craving more. The world is moving at a pace we can’t stop anymore. But also, twenty years ago, photography had a market of maybe a hundred million people — those who would go into dark rooms, develop film. Today it’s four billion people with a phone in their pocket, multiple times a day. It has changed journalism, changed marketing, and has become a massive industry. The price of a Richard Avedon print has gone through the roof. Democratising something doesn’t destroy its highest form. It elevates it.

CB AI can write songs barely distinguishable from human-made ones. At Hyph, you’ve made a deliberate choice to work exclusively with human-made stems. Why is that a question of attitude, not technology?

AC Because AI is a mathematical model with an expected result. You’re going to get the same flat landscape as everyone else, because the algorithm has no heart, no soul, no training that makes it different from the next person. So why would you even listen to it? What you should democratise is the joy of playing with music. The joy of engaging with it, building something and putting yourself in it. The quick-fix AI version is the Emperor’s New Clothes. Music needs stars you can look up to. It needs Billie Eilish speaking to kids who feel like outsiders. It needs real narrative.

CB You spent thirty years writing for others. Whose voice had a deep impact on you?

AC The first was Celine Dion. I was twenty-four and she had just done My Heart Will Go On. We got a call — she wanted an uptempo song. Max Martin, Kristian Lundin, and I wrote That’s the Way It Is. When we brought the demo to Florida and she came into the studio, and when she sang the first line, the hair on my neck stood up. It was angelic. The second time was Paul Stanley from KISS. That voice coming through the speakers. I said, “Can you do that again?” In my entire career, it was those two moments when I felt that a great song became something else entirely.

CB If it works — billions of people making music — what does the world sound like?

AC The music we grew up with is actually from a very small portion of the world: mostly the UK and the US, maybe some Swedish pop. But the global music climate is so much larger. We’ve already seen K-pop become a dominant force. Afrobeats is rising to the top. The future of music will be small islands of mashups — interesting, unexpected things put together in the palm of your hand by people who would never have had access to the tools before. A tastemaker with an influential blog cranking out dance records. A kid in Lagos building something nobody has heard yet. Will all of it be great? No. But you flip the channel. The 1950s to the 2000s were the Renaissance, the great painters, the great era. What comes next might be something we don’t have a word for yet. And that’s exactly why it’s worth playing.

Wie vorgestellt in SLEEK #89 – PLAY.