5 Swedish music imports we’d rather not live without
Tonight, rising Swedish pop star Lykke Li will bring her alluring, dreamy darkness and chilly, Swedish stoicism to the Vic's stage. While Li’s first album, 2008’s Youth Novels, positioned the singer as a cute pop darling with a bit of an edge, this year’s Wounded Rhymes saw Li dropping all of her kewpie doll pretense to deliver a record that’s decidedly starker in tone, full of banging tribal percussion and evocative landscapes. The end result is an album that feels a lot like an Ingmar Bergman film, at once foreboding and grim, but also with a warm sense of humanity at its core. Li even seems to be paying a nod to the famed Swedish director’s The Seventh Seal in her video for “I Follow Rivers,” which positions Li as death in a clip that’s full of Swedish reserve and winter scenery.
Chicagoans love their Swedes, and Li’s visit to one of the Windy City’s most iconic music destination got us thinking about Sweden’s other musical contributions, both past and present.
ABBA
At this point, ABBA seems almost as much of a Swedish cliché as meatballs or Ikea, but it would be criminal to overlook what ended up being one of the most successful pop acts of all time. And while most of us probably associate songs like “Dancing Queen” with aging drag queens in 2011, ABBA’s enduring legacy extends far beyond bad karaoke sessions and well-placed Madonna samples and into other mixed-gender Swedish bands like ’90s favorites Ace Of Base and the fantastically-coiffed Roxette. Look at it this way: While America was busy enjoying The Dark Knight in 2008, Mamma Mia! was the United Kingdom’s highest-grossing movie of the same year. Obviously ABBA still has fans, otherwise they wouldn’t have to keep turning down a billion dollars to reunite.
The Tallest Man On Earth
Sweden might be best known for sunny pop tunes and leggy blondes, but every once in a while it births a scruffy folk singer that sounds more like Bob Dylan than he does the Swedish Chef. The Tallest Man On Earth (a.k.a. Kristian Matsson) might not be a household name, but with two fantastic and heartbreaking full-lengths, he’s already become one of the most respected songwriters working today. And while his chainsaw vocal approach may not be suited for everyone’s tastes, Matsson’s lyrics have a knack for cutting through all that Swedish austerity and going straight to the gut. You’ll probably want a stiff drink when it’s all over. May we recommend Svedka?
Robyn
There’s perhaps no one more universally beloved in the indie pop world right now than Robyn. Despite an arsenal of catchy dance numbers that should put Katy Perry and Lady Gaga to shame, Robyn still hasn’t managed to get a firm grip of the mainstream pop charts, which might have a little to do with her vaguely unsettling dance routines (as seen here in the “Call Your Girlfriend” video) and her peculiar, I Am Curious (Yellow)-style frank sexuality. Or maybe it’s because people would rather go to the dance floor to escape their problems than be confronted by them. Robyn’s songs, despite all the blippy synths and pounding basslines, usually have a strong undercurrent of sadness to them, with subjects like watching an ex dance with a new girlfriend at the club or coaching a new love how to break up with his lingering girlfriend in the easiest way possible. Poor Swedes; even the dance songs are depressing.
The Knife
Fellow Swedes Peter, Bjorn And John might have also utilized a whistle and found themselves in every conceivable marketing campaign from 2007 to 2009, but notoriously reclusive electronic duo The Knife put the sound to a much more sinister use on their gloriously creepy 2006 single, “Marble House.” The Knife have been relatively quiet as of late (with member Karin Dreijer Andersson dedicating time to her side project, Fever Ray), although the siblings did get together last year to contribute songs to an opera based on Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species. Considering this is a group that made a video about a family of mice living behind a wall full of existential dread, that’s far from the weirdest thing it’s ever done.
Neneh Cherry
Long before M.I.A. was filming music videos in front of chaotic graphic backgrounds and performing at awards shows while heavily pregnant, Stockholm native Neneh Cherry was doing the same thing, and with just as much attitude. Like M.I.A., Cherry inexplicably scored a mainstream hit with 1989’s “Buffalo Stance,” a song that made it all the way to number 3 on the Billboard charts. Cherry’s style was a bit too off-brand and quirky to sustain a mainstream career in the days of Paula Abdul (when Paula was considered normal), but she did entertain a solo career until 1996 before taking an extended break. She’s since formed a new group called CirKus and has contributed vocals to projects from Swedish mega-proudcers Teddybears and Kleerup. Some other vital trivia about Cherry: She helped bankroll Massive Attack when it started, her brother is Eagle-Eye Cherry, and she was a grandma at age 40.
