10 pop hits you didn't know Benny Blanco created

Early in Blanco's career, he was mentored by producer Dr. Luke (full name Lukasz Gottwald) who signed him to his production company, Kasz Money Productions.

In a July 2018 episode of "The Zach Sang Show," Blanco said he learned how to produce pop music from producers like Gottwald and Max Martin.

"From those guys, I learned so much about how to write songs and how to craft the perfect pop hook," he said.

One of Blanco's early projects with Dr. Luke was Britney Spears' 2008 hit "Circus," which they wrote with fellow producer and songwriter Claude Kelly. Blanco was only 20 years old at the time of its release.

"Circus" reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Also in 2008, Blanco and Dr. Luke worked together to write and record Kesha's "Tik Tok."

Kesha told Vulture in 2024 that she was encouraged to make the lyrics of the song "dumber."

"After I wrote them, I was like, 'This is too dumb, right? It doesn't make sense to brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniel's.' But I remember Benny Blanco was like, 'No, it's sick. Just don't overthink it.' That's what we ended up with," she said.

The song was certified 12x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and has more than one billion streams on Spotify.

In 2014, Kesha sued Dr. Luke, alleging he had drugged and raped her, and psychologically abused her during their working relationship. They settled the suit, and his subsequent countersuit for defamation, in 2023. Gottwald denied the accusations and was never charged with a crime.

Blanco told the "Behind the Wall" podcast that it took eight days to write the lyrics to "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry.

"There's a version that says like, 'Before you know it, you're just a mom in a minivan' and it was all about like coming of age," he said, adding, "We just changed it like a million times."

Perry, Blanco, Bonnie McKee, Dr. Luke, and Max Martin were all songwriters on the project, while Blanco, Dr. Luke, and Martin produced it.

The rewrites paid off, as "Teenage Dream" was certified Diamond by the RIAA and was Perry's second-consecutive No. 1 single after "California Gurls," which Blanco also helped produce.

It's hard to imagine anyone other than Rihanna singing "Diamonds," but that's exactly what Blanco, Sia, and Stargate (a Norwegian songwriting and production duo) had in mind when they wrote and produced their demo in the early 2010s.

Blanco told "The Howard Stern Show" in 2024 that they originally wanted to give the song to Kanye West or Eminem. "But then, once Rihanna sang it, I was like 'Oh my God, this is something,'" he said.

But getting the song finished came down to a mad rush; Blanco told The Source in October 2012, "We had one day to finish it. We didn't even have her vocals yet. We had to finish all the music around it without even having her vocals, and I was like 'There's no way this is happening.' Then, we get the song the next day, we had to mix the song the same day and master it and then it was out like a few days later."

"Diamonds" was released in September 2012 as the lead single on Rihanna's seventh studio album, "Unapologetic," and went on to become her 12th No. 1 single — tying Madonna and the Supremes — and was certified Diamond by the RIAA.

After achieving massive mainstream success with "Moves Like Jagger," Blanco teamed up with Maroon 5 again in 2012 for the song "Payphone," featuring Wiz Khalifa.

In 2012, Blanco told Rolling Stone, "I love when things don't make sense," adding, "I like when bands dip into a whole different genre."

In 2013, Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine told The New York Times, "It's almost as if [Blanco] has the Midas touch in putting the right people together at the right time to create a musical moment. He's about the collaboration. And he's so good at nailing down who does everything best."

"Payphone" was a commercial success and was nominated for the Grammy for best pop duo/group performance in 2013, but ultimately lost to Gotye and Kimbra for "Somebody That I Used to Know."

Blanco was a key collaborator on Sheeran's third studio album, "Divide" (2017), which included hits like "Shape of You," "Castle on the Hill," and "Happier."

After starting the song with Ryan Tedder, Blanco and Sheeran continued to write and produce "Happier" on a cruise ship — Blanco has a fear of flying — from New York to London.

Filmmaker Murray Cummings documented the process in the 2018 documentary "Songwriter," capturing Sheeran and Blanco recording vocals and brainstorming lyrics in a studio on the ship.

Speaking of Ed Sheeran, he and Blanco also wrote "Love Yourself" while working on "Divide."

Blanco told "The Howard Stern Show" they wrote the song on a tour bus from Canada to the US, and that it was inspired by Sheeran's lack of wanting to discuss his personal life in a song.

However, Blanco famously changed the original lyrics of the song from "F— Yourself" to "Love Yourself."

"I don't like to curse unless it's really important to curse in the song," he said, adding, "I wanna leave a little bit up to the audience, 'cause you know you're saying go f— yourself, you don't have to say it."

Ultimately, the pair gave the song to Justin Bieber, who was finishing his album "Purpose."

Long before Gomez and Blanco started dating, the pair worked together on the 2015 hit "Same Old Love."

The song was largely written by fellow pop star Charli XCX and Ross Golan, though producers Blanco and Stargate contributed to the lyrics, too.

Charli XCX told Grazia in 2016 that she actually wished she'd kept the song for herself, "But then, I kind of realised it was actually the perfect home for that song because coming from [Gomez], it meant kind of a lot more than coming from me."

In 2017, Halsey spoke with iHeart Radio about creating "Now or Never," the lead single from her album, "Hopeless Fountain Kingdom."

"Benny Blanco and I did 'Now or Never' together and he is one of my favorite people in the whole world," she said, adding, "When he and I were working together, he had a lot of faith in me and he knew that he could pull a really really incredible song out of me, and he was so respectful of me."

The song went on to be certified 2x Platinum by the RIAA and Halsey was included in Blanco's debut single, "Eastside," with Khalid in 2018.

In 2017, Julia Michaels told Billboard's "How It Went Down" series that she wrote "Issues" with Justin Tranter, Blanco, and Stargate in about an hour after getting into a fight with her boyfriend.

"I just thought, well I've got issues and he's got 'em, too, and it's really crazy that nobody's written a song like this because everybody goes through something like this," she said, adding, "Once we figured out that that was the concept, words just kind of flew out of me 'cause I was so in it."

"It was the first time in my life that I kept a song for myself," Michaels added.

Similar to Blanco, Michaels has had a prolific career as a songwriter in addition to her work as a solo artist; some of her writing credits include Justin Bieber's "Sorry," Hailee Steinfeld's "Love Myself," and Fifth Harmony's "Miss Movin' On." More recently, she contributed to songs on Sabrina Carpenter's album, "Short n' Sweet."

Blanco and Stargate produced the song, which was nominated for song of the year at the Grammys in 2018.