Song: ‘Loser Like Me’
Artist: Glee Cast
US chart peak: 6
Release date: March 15, 2011
Writers: Adam Anders, Peer Åström, Savan Kotecha, Max Martin, Shellback
Producers: Max Martin, Shellback, Peer Åström, Adam Anders
Quintessential Max moment: The shift in the chorus into “you wannabe a loser like me”
Video synopsis: There isn’t an official one actually. It’s just typical Glee stuff

I have never watched or had the desire to watch Glee so this was the only song among this list that I’d never heard before. Although I realised quickly that I had heard it before under different names and sung by different artists. Even the central lyrical theme – you are great, ignore the haters, let’s all build our own army to attack the people who aren’t ‘losers’ therefore causing a vortex of bullying – was pretty played out by 2011.

Co-written with Glee’s musical director Adam Anders, the song has all the hallmarks of standard Max Martin for that time. In fact, Anders was pretty open about calling him in to get the song – the first original song to appear on Glee – onto US radio, an area of American media Glee hadn’t managed to seduce up until that point. One US radio director said that while they drew attention to the various covers on the show each week (at this point it was biggest TV show in America, so hard to ignore completely), they’d basically been waiting for an original song to finally get involved. ‘Loser Like Me’ represented that final push.

But who was to blame for Max’s involvement? Co-writer Savan Kotecha actually.

“I was asked to do it by Adam Anders, who’s the musical director of Glee and he came and approached Max Martin first and then Max called me,” he told Digital Spy. “It was fun because I’m the only one out of me, Max and Shellback who watched Glee. I was a Gleek in high school, I was in the choir – so I love that show. What was great about the response was that it became an anti-bullying song.”

So there we are. Can we just forget about this one actually?