Sven Lindström and Per Gessle are back on the airwaves with the final countdown of the best songs of the Swedish ’90s in the April episode of Nordic Rox. Positions from No. 5 to 1 are played on the show.
The guys have been struggling through 30 songs to finally get to the top of the list. Sven asks Per how he feels about the top 5. Mr. G thinks it’s a tough competition up there, but these are 5 great songs.
Before that, they take a trip to the garage and they find The Sinners there. When She Lies is played by the band. Then comes The One You Need by Miller Moon from Malmö. Surfway by Sydkraft (south power – Per translates) is next. They came from Halmstad and this song is from 1978. This was the first single they ever made. Sven thinks it’s a cool song. He remembers Per saying back in the days when he had Gyllene Tider – which the guys will come back to later on in the show – that Sydkraft came from Halmstad and they were signed to EMI, so that made PG think that GT could never be signed by EMI, because they can’t have two bands from this ridiculous little town on the west coast. But they could. Gyllene Tider eventually wound up on EMI, so they became label mates with Sydkraft.
The guys are moving back in time to one of their favourite parts of the show, where they have a look at what was buzzing on the Swedish top charts back in the days. Approximately 60 years ago this week, they had a big song on the radio in Sweden called Sunny Girl by the Hep Stars. It was written by Benny Andersson who eventually became one of the Bs in ABBA. Haha. This is one of his first compositions and it was a major song in Sweden over the summer of 1966. Sven suggests if you haven’t heard the Hep Stars before, listen to 20-something Benny Andersson and see if you can hear traces of the future ABBA sounds there.
The next song is Above The Candystore by Paola. Per thinks it’s a fantastic song, produced and written by Klas Åhlund who also was a member of Teddybears and produced and wrote a lot of stuff for Robyn, for instance. Paola was a great pop singer and this song was forgotten, not getting the credit it deserves, Sven says. Per loves this track. He played it a lot.
This brings the guys to the top 5 of their best of the Swedish ’90s list. No. 5 is a song called Tuesday Afternoon by Stonecake from 1991. Sven always had the feeling that Paul McCartney would have loved to have written this one. Per confirms it was very much influenced by his style.
No. 4 is one of the most successful Swedish bands ever internationally and a great band as well. It wasn’t easy to pick a song from The Cardigans because they have so many, especially in the ’90s. Sven and Per stuck with My Favourite Game. Per thinks it’s a great one. Sven agrees it’s a cool track. It was written by Peter Svensson and produced by Tore Johansson. It’s homegrown Swedish stuff, which made a lot of Japanese fans fill the streets in Malmö suddenly. The Cardigans were very big in Japan.
In the bronze position they are changing language. More or less everyone in Swedish bands was singing in English in the ’90s. But here is a bold fighter for the Swedish language. It’s the band PG was in at the time, Gyllene Tider. Det är över nu (It’s over now). That sounds a bit depressive, but in fact, the band was just kicking off again. GT started in the late ’70s and broke up in 1984, and then they came back in the mid ’90s. This was actually the comeback single in ’95. Per wrote it in a dressing room in Osaka, Japan on the Roxette Crash! Boom! Bang! tour. It was the first time they had worked with producer Michael Ilbert, who changed their sound to be a little more raw and heavier. Sven agrees, they sounded tougher and rougher. This one became a massive comeback for Gyllene Tider. It became the opening for big tours that would happen in the next two decades for this little band from Halmstad. Then there were several comebacks over the years, like every fifth year, drawing record audiences to the shows.
No. 2 is Driving One Of Your Cars by Lisa Miskovsky, a girl from the north. She made some fantastic tracks in the ’90s. This is one of Per’s favourite songs. It definitely deserves the runner-up position on this chart.
The winner is one of the few songs that Sven and Per agree on. It’s a band that started in the early ’90s and became famous and sort of shaped the sound of the Swedish ’90s. They made their debut album, A Car Crash In The Blue, in 1993 that had this single, Stone Me Into The Groove. And the band is… Atomic Swing. They sounded like nothing else. The singer, Niclas Frisk, had a lot to do with that, but the whole sound was original. It was very special at the time and he was the writer as well, so he made some fantastic music. It’s a very well-deserved number one position that they put themselves on in this chart. It’s timeless pop music by a highly original band. They sounded terrific.
Bad Blood by Per + Lena is played next, then comes Holiday Inn by Adiam Dymott and All My Senses by Mando Diao.
Sven and Per thank the listeners for joining them and they say goodbye. The show ends with Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom, as usual.
Pic by Anders Roos
Thanks for your support, Sven!