Swedish Music For Dummies: History of Swedish Pop music [Part 2]

Wednesday, 22 October 2008

History of Swedish Pop music [Part 2]

[Do you want to read Part 1 first?, here is the link]

In the first part of the Swedish pop history i told you about the bands that developed from the influences from bands like the Beatles. My parents often speak of these times. Now im going to focus on another time frame, the 80ties and early 90ties. During this time i discovered music myself and started to record tapes from the radio with hits from the charts (it was hard because you always had a little bit of talking in the end of the songs...). When i look back on this time i realize that i was too young fo find music myself, except for the one that was played on the radio, and i was fed with hits from the first boy bands [for example NKOTB]. This is not music that i would listen to today, but there is always the nostalgia factor that makes it enjoyable nontheless.

Many of you knows of Roxette, the duo that had their big breakthrough after being featured with a song in the movie Pretty Woman in the end of the 90ties. What you might not know is that Per Gessle was a big pop icon in Sweden from the early 80ties. With his pop band Gyllende Tider he made many hits that are signifcant to my generation and is still freaquently played on the Swedish dancefloors. Marie Fredriksson also had her own solo career on the side later on. Other important music influences during the early 80ties are of course ABBA and Carola Häggqvist [now simply Carola] who won the Swedish part of The Eurovision Song contest in 1983 with Främling. Since then her career has been going up and down and the her life has been a regular in the Swedish tabloids. Outside Sweden she is mostly known for her religious songs. Other names to be mentioned during this time is the punk-rock band Ebba Grön, the singer-songwriter Ted Gärdestad and Magnus Uggla, who was brilliant in his early years [see video].

Later came artists like Lena Phillipsson, Mauro Scocco, Lili & Sussi who made a great impact on the Swedish pop climate. If you listen to Cat 5 there is a sound of Lili & Susi to be found. There are of course many others, and if you enjoy these i urge you to look up simillar artists on last.fm. Lisa Nilsson and Eva Dahlgren [see video] was successful female singer-songwriters during this period and has probably influenced many of the female vocalists of today.

So even if they sometimes feel hopelessly old... they still influenced me when i was growing up and many of the artists today sat on their rooms with posters of these people on their walls, wishing they could be just like them.

Lisa Nilsson - Himlen Runt Hörnet