Sven Lindström and Per Gessle were on air with their countdown of the Top30 ’90s songs from Sweden in the February episode of Nordic Rox. Positions from No. 15 to 11 were played on the program.
The guys are in Halmstad and they are ready to make February a bit brighter, wherever you are listening to them. Per says it’s been really grey and dark for several months now, but where they are, they don’t really have any snow, in the southern part of Sweden, by the water. It’s just grey, fifty shades of grey. Sven says „southern” is a flexible word, because in the US it means Florida, Texas, etc. It’s not really the same thing in Sweden. It’s a bit chillier there.
Sven says Per has been busy touring and a couple of weeks ago he saw Roxette play at the Wembley Arena in London. It was very cool. Per adds it’s been a great tour. They started a year ago in Cape Town, South Africa and moved to Australia. Then they did Europe last summer and also in the autumn. It continues this year with South America in April. Then they move into Europe over the summer and hopefully North America in September, October.
Sven remembers he was there in South America when Roxette played there last time in 2012. There were quite some scenes with really devoted fans coming up. PG says they have fantastic fans in South America, as everywhere, but they are really hotblooded down there. They show their feelings and emotions a lot. They really look forward to coming back and playing in Buenos Aires, Rio, Montevideo, Santiago, all those places. Sven understands it completely.
Speaking of hotblooded, the guys kick off by going straight to the sky with Wrong Face On by The Hellacopters. It’s a great band, making a big comeback. The song is from their latest album, Overdriver. They had a few years off and then they came back with a bang released last year. They started out in 1994. The guitarist and singer, Nicke Andersson, the guy with the military cap, started out as a drummer in the Swedish death metal band Entombed. Per didn’t know that. It was quite a turnover when they started The Hellacopters, Sven says. Per thinks Nicke is a great front guy. Sven agrees and adds he is a great songwriter as well.
Let Your Heart Dance With Me by Roxette is next. It’s not quite new, but maybe the first listen for many. This is a Roxette track from 2020, however, it was recorded for the Good Karma album in 2014, but they never finished it. They finished it off for a greatest hits album called Bag Of Trix in 2020. This is one of the last singles released by Roxette and it’s got quite good stream rates. It’s very popular among fans. Sven is curious how come it didn’t make it on the Good Karma album. Per thinks they had too many songs, as always. When they did that album, Marie was pretty ill. You cut things short once in a while. You start songs and then you never really finish them off. There were a couple of tracks like that. When they were going to make this compilation album, Bag Of Trix, Per just got reminded that they had a couple of unfinished ditties in the bag.
Happier by Sarah Klang is played next taken from her album Beautiful Woman, which came out in 2025. Almost a brand new track. Beautiful.
The guys continue with Beat It. Sven suggests holding your hat or horses. It’s not a Michael Jackson song, but the Swedish band The Sunshine from 2005.
A Song From Under The Floorboards by Lolita Pop is next from 1989. This rock band is from Sweden. They were very popular in the ’80s. This song is slightly unusual, because they wrote their own material, but this one is a cover. It’s a Magazine track originally, written by Howard Devoto, who used to be in the Buzzcocks, one of Per’s favourite bands. One of his favourite songs ever is Ever Fallen In Love. It’s an amazing track and still sounds so cool according to Mr. G.
The guys start off the ’90s countdown with a band called Beagle from Lund, the south of Sweden. If you like musical trivia, the guys can tell you that Beagle was the last band ever to be signed by legendary ABBA manager Stikkan Andersson for his Polar Music label in 1991. One of the main figures in the band nowadays is the Roxette bass guitarist, and also a co-producer on the album Per made under the name PG Roxette. ABBA and Roxette, Beagle is really close to rock royalty, Sven says. Haha. The guys play The Things That We Say, the first single of the Beagle’s album Sound On Sound.
Save Tonight by Eagle-Eye Cherry from 1997 is No. 14. It’s one of Per’s favourite tracks, a big hit. Eagle-Eye sounds like someone invented that name after two glasses of wine to have a cool artist name, but it’s his real name. His mother was a Swedish textile artist, Moki Cherry, and his father was an American jazz musician, Don Cherry. Per knows even more about his family. His half sister is Neneh Cherry, another Swedish artist and Titiyo is his half sister as well. It’s a musical family for sure.
The guys go back even more in time, to 1995, and a band called Brainpool. PG loves Brainpool. He signed them to his publishing company in the ’90s and they were actually supporting Roxette also on the European tour, the Crash! Boom! Bang! tour in 1994. They were a hyper energetic young band from Lund, Sweden. They were a great band, great players, they had great songs, songwriting, and they just had this new wave-ish attitude, mixed together with the early The Who stuff. Christoffer Lundquist, who has evolved into a big producer, had this sort of Brian Wilson influence in all of it. He was a really great arranger as well, even though he wasn’t really the prolific songwriter in the team. Per thought they did some really interesting stuff. Per started to work closely with Christoffer in 2002. He was actually around PG a little earlier than that, in the late ’90s, in 1997, when Per made a solo album. He was an arranger then, but later he became Per’s co-producer. Mr. G has been working with him ever since. He is still a rather flamboyant guitarist in the live band. It’s interesting, because Brainpool and Beagle are two bands from Lund, Sweden, and Per sort of hijacked two of the leading figures. Haha. That’s the way Per is. The song they play is Bandstarter from the album Painkiller, Brainpool’s second album.
Sven is checking his list and tries to guess what comes after 13. No. 12. Haha. He says Maths was never his strongest subject at school. Per asks him if he went to school at all. Sven laughs and replies, „a few weeks”. Haha. Anyway, the next song is by a typical band from the Swedish ’90s indie pop era. It’s The Wannadies from the north. It’s proof that the guys play music from the north as well. Sweden is quite a stretched out country and most people live in the southern part. If you fly from the north to the south, it’s a three-hour flight, the guys add. That’s how narrow the country is. Back to the topic, the song they play is You & Me Song. The singer and the front figure in The Wannadies is Pär Wiksten. He has been producing, he has been a songwriter and collaborating with other artists as well. This is by far their biggest song and it’s from an album called Be A Girl from 1994.
Today’s number one, which is No. 11 on the ’90s Top30 countdown takes us to Gothenburg, 1996. The Soundtrack Of Our Lives is a band that the guys played a lot on Nordic Rox over the years, for good reasons. They like them a lot. The band made some fantastic albums and this particular song is one of their best. Instant Repeater ’99. Their debut album was called Welcome To The Infant Freebase. Sven says „instant” instead of „infant”, so Per corrects him. Then Sven says some idiot on his computer wrote „instant”, it might have been himself. Haha. The band is fronted by a charismatic leader, Ebbot Lundberg. Per thinks he is a great singer. Sven asks a pop trivia question from Per, if Ebbot was the guy’s real name. Per thinks it was, but it wasn’t. It comes from Tobbe, the nickname of Torbjörn, a Swedish name. He just turned it around and it became Ebbot. The guys agree that it was a good idea.
Sven and Per move ahead. They play Skidresorna (which translates into… Ski Travelling or Ski Journeys), a song by Björn Olsson who has made lots of albums with instrumental music. Lots of whistling is going on. He is highly original and he got a knack for beautiful melodies. He is also a very successful producer for other artists. He just came out with a new album called No Title. There is a bridge between him and The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. He used to be a member of the band in the early days. He also was a member in Union Carbide Productions with Ebbot Lundberg, but he changed style completely. Per thinks everyone in Gothenburg has played together, haha.
Any Other Day by Wildie is next from Malmö in the south of Sweden. Per likes this song a lot. It’s a very nice track.
Sven and PG thank the listeners for joining them and they say goodbye. The show ends with Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom, as usual.
Still is from the Bag Of Trix talks recorded by Anders Roos.
Thanks for your support, Sven!