Sven Lindström

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!

Sven Lindström and Per Gessle are so thrilled because they are reaching the upper level of the Swedish best of ’90s top 30 list in the March episode of Nordic Rox. Positions from No. 10 to 6 are played on the program.

Before that, they kick off the show with a band that can’t stop celebrating. It’s The Hives with Hooray, Hooray, Hooray from their latest album The Hives Forever Forever The Hives. The next song is Sløtface from Norway with her latest single For The Boys. Then comes She’s Not You by Ola Främby from Lund, Sweden. Per likes this song a lot. The guys say the band was called The Girls, then it became The Men. Sven is joking that when they grew older, they also changed sex.

They guys are going back in time. Sven says they are nerds and they thought it could be interesting to have a look back sometimes and see what spun in the Swedish airwaves in the ’60s or ’70s. They eventually wound up with a radio show called Tio i topp, which translates into Top 10. It was one of the most loved shows ever in the ’60s for the kids. This week, 61 years ago, there was a Swedish band from Gothenburg in the charts with a fantastic song. The Beatles was topping the charts with their version of Rock & Roll Music. They were a tough act to push out of the number one position, but on position number two there was Tages with I Should Be Glad. Per thinks it’s amazing. It never ceases to amaze Sven that a Swedish pop group could be named Tages, because that would be like the name of a ’40s dance band. Per thinks it’s a great track and they wrote it themselves. Some would say that they were not only one of the best pop bands in Sweden during the ’60s, they were also the best dressed. They looked really cool and had great hairdos.

Someone New by Eskobar feat. Heather Nova is next from 2002. Per thinks it’s a beautiful song. Sven thinks it’s an interesting collaboration of a Swedish band and a British singer-songwriter.

The guys are ready to go into the top 10 list of their countdown. No. 10 is Bob Hund. Bob the dog. Sven thinks it’s an amazing band. It seems to him that those guys who wouldn’t fit in in ordinary bands formed a band together, to become outcasts and to become brilliant. Per agrees. The band was really cool, especially live. They actually gave it up last year, they did their last show. They have been doing this for many decades and this is one of their most popular songs in Sweden. It’s a great track. It’s still hard to understand, since it’s in Swedish and since the singer is singing in a broad southern Swedish dialect, even some Swedes have difficulties with understanding it. The title says it all though. Istället För Musik: Förvirring (in English it’s Instead Of Music: Confusion). A great track and a great title.

On position No. 9 there is one of Per Gessle’s favourite bands, Broder Daniel. PG thinks it was a great band. They also came from Gothenburg, and did some amazing songs. One of their best songs is Underground. Sven asks Per what it was about them that hooked Per on to. He replies that they had this sort of new wave attitude and in the middle of all the chaotic things that they did, out came some fantastic pop songs and this is one of them from 1996. Mr. G still likes it a lot.

1996 was a great year, the guys think. PG asks Sven if he remembers ’96 and Sven replies if you can remember the ’90s, you weren’t there. That’s what they used to say about the ’60s.

They move on to 1997 and No. 8 on the chart. There is a Swedish singer, Robyn, who made her debut album in 1995, but this single, Show Me Love, came out in 1997 and became a big hit for her. It was the fourth single from her debut album. She is touring the US in September. She stayed away from the music industry for a couple of years, but now she is back with a vengeance. This song was written in cooperation by Robyn herself and Max Martin, and it was produced by Dennis Pop. Per thinks it sounds very ’90s. Sven is curious what is typical for the ’90s sound for PG if they are talking about the Swedish hit machine music in the mid ’90s. Mr. G says they were very active with Roxette in the ’90s and they were still pretty organic, touring. But this was another side of pop music, more studio focused. More programmed stuff and more computer driven and all these songwriting teams started to develop. Roxette came from a different breed, from a different generation. Sven says they had one leg back in the ’60s pop band.

No. 7 is Joyride, Roxette’s fourth US number one single. It was the title track from the Joyride album, of course. This particular version is the US remix for Top40 radio done by Brian Malouf. He was a very popular remixer and producer and he did a great job with this one. This was very typical at the time that the American record labels wanted their own mix for the American radio and their own versions for certain formats on the radio as well. Per remembers doing Listen To Your Heart in a version without guitars, because it was a radio format that didn’t play guitars. It sounded silly to them, of course, but that’s the way the radio wanted it to be. This particular version of Joyride was not released anywhere else. It came out on a 12-inch single. It’s interesting to compare the two because this one sounds a lot busier. There are a lot of things happening. The original version is a lot drier, so to speak. It’s a little more rocky, there is a snare drum, for instance. The drums are louder and a little bit more reverb to it. It’s nothing new for the American listeners, because this one is the standard version in the US. Sven asks Per if there is anything that hasn’t been said, something he can say about Joyride that he never had said before. Mr. G can tell the traditional story of how it was written. His girlfriend at the time, now his wife, left a note on his piano saying, ”Hej din tok, jag älskar dig”, which translates into, ”Hello, you fool, I love you”. He thought it was the most beautiful thing to read, so he thought that’s going to be a chorus, and he was in the middle of writing a song, so he just used it: „hello, you fool, I love you, c’mon, join the Joyride”. That was like a gift from heaven. His wife didn’t get any songwriting credits.

No. 6 is Hey Princess by Popsicle. The song is from their debut album called Lacquer, 1992. Per doesn’t know much about them. Sven says they are a typically Swedish indie ’90s band. When he pictures them, he sees a band gazing at their shoes, typical shoegazers, a typical ’90s band. They had a couple of big songs in Sweden. They had good songwriters and they were really radio friendly for the ’90s. Per was on the other side of the planet in 1992 touring, so Popsicle swept him by more or less. He heard about them later on, but at the time he wasn’t that much into listening to them.

Down In The Past by Mando Diao, Show ‘Em Good by Cocktail Slippers and You Want The Sun by Niki & The Dove are played.

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!

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!

Sven Lindström and Per Gessle continued their countdown of the Top30 ’90s songs from Sweden in the January episode of Nordic Rox. Positions from No. 20 to 16 are on the program.

The guys are sitting in beautiful sunny weather in Halmstad. They welcome 2026 and remember that Nordic Rox started 20 years ago. Sven asks Per where he was in 2006. PG has to think about it, but he probably spent most of his time in the studio working, recording. As always. Another year in the studio. Sven invites us to join them for 20 more years.

Before the countdown, they play some stinging new rock sounds from The Hives. Roll Out The Red Carpet is taken from their latest album The Hives Forever Forever The Hives, with the band dressed as medieval kings on the cover. Why not.

Always Like This, a new single by Sahara Hotnights is next. They got a new album coming out in February, called No One Really Changes. Then comes Waste Of Time by Smith & Thell, a wonderful song from November 2024, taken from their last album Chosen Family.

A band from Stockholm you might have heard of is next. Sven is teasing Per: it’s beginning with A and it ends with an A. Per joins in, he is wondering what that can be. ABBA, of course. For a brief period, they were into disco in the late ’70s and they did it very well. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! is actually one of Per’s favourite ABBA tracks. It was a single, but it wasn’t on any album. It just blew his mind when he heard it when he was really young. It’s got one of the greatest intros in the world. They released this single just before they went on their big world tour. A reasonable good kick-off to the tour.

Ifrån mej själv, some Swedish lyrics by Dundertåget or Thunder Express as they call themselves when they play in English. Per likes this song a lot, he thinks it’s a great track. The band is not around anymore, unfortunately. They packed in a few years ago, but their tracks are still available.

The guys get down to their ’90s list. They go to a town in Sven’s home county Småland, neighbouring to Halmstad in the middle of Sweden and a little town called Älmhult, famous throughout the world for IKEA. The Creeps are also from that town. They were a great band according to PG. They were supporting Roxette on a tour in the ’80s. Their Blue Tomato album is produced by Clarence Öfwerman, who is the Roxette producer. It was a big album for them. It came out in 1990 and here on position No. 20 Per and Sven play Ooh – I Like It! from this record. For a second, Sven thought Per was going to say ooh, I didn’t like it. Haha. Per says ooh, he did like it. He likes The Creeps a lot and it’s a really cool track. They were a fantastic live band and they had a great singer, Robert Jelinek.

No. 19 is Meja, a girl who had a breakthrough with this song, All ‘Bout The Money, and she made it big in Japan. Her debut album came out in 1996 and she wrote most of the songs with Billy Steinberg. Steinberg wrote a lot of songs with Tom Kelly, e.g. Like A Virgin for Madonna, Eternal Flame for The Bangles, I Touch Myself for Divinyls and True Colors for Cyndi Lauper. He is a fantastic songwriter. For her second album, Meja teamed up with a Swedish guy called Douglas Carr and this became a big song for her. Sven is not sure about how her name is pronounced internationally. Per says she is always going to be Meja for him – pronounced in the Swedish way.

Coming up at position No. 18 is a joint venture between Sweden and Denmark. Gör mig lycklig nu is a great song, one of Per’s favourite tracks from the ’90s. It’s a collaboration between Mats Ronander and Kim Larsen from Denmark. Kim Larsen was in one of Denmark’s biggest bands, Gasolin, but they never really made it outside Scandinavia. They sang in Danish, but they had a few songs in sort of Danish-English. Mats Ronander was connected with ABBA for a while. He was in the ABBA live band and he is a legendary musician in Sweden. He is a great guitarist and a fantastic harmonica player. He had some hit singles and this is one of the biggest ones, taking us back to 1992. Gör mig lycklig nu (translated into Make Me Happy Now). Per says this song certainly made him happy. Sven adds it put a smile on their faces in the Nordic Rox camp.

The guys are moving forward towards a group that really, really made it big in the ’90s. Somewhat unexpectedly, from basically nowhere to the top of the charts in the States. Ace of Base was in good hands, Per says. They started out early working with Max Martin and they had several big hits. The Sign was No. 1, their breakthrough song was All That She Wants, but Per’s favourite song from Ace of Base came a couple of years later. Sven would have voted for either All That She Wants or The Sign, but then Per having had four US No. 1 hits has the final say, the veto. The Hot 100 veto. Haha. Per says sorry about that. Life Is A Flower is his favourite. Mr. G doesn’t know if this song ever entered any charts in the States. Sven confirms it didn’t, but it was a big hit in Europe. Per just liked it from the first time he heard it. He likes this sort of music. First he says it was produced and co-written by Tommy Ekman, who was a member of the Swedish band Freestyle in the ’80s, a great musician and a great producer. After the song is played, Per makes a correction. Tommy Ekman was not the writer. The song is written by Jonas Berggren from Ace of Base. Tommy, however, was the producer. Per says he is sorry about that. Sven says everyone can make a mistake. He made ONE a long time ago, he laughs, so he knows how it feels. Anyway, since it wasn’t a big hit in the States, some of the listeners might not have even heard it. Now it’s No. 17 on the guy’s chart.

For the last song on today’s ’90s list, PG and Sven go down to the south of Sweden again. Against The Sun by Eggstone is No. 16. They guys think it’s a great band. Sven says the band set up the Tambourine Studios in Malmö where a lot of bands – e.g. The Cardigans – would record quite many hits. They brought English bands like Saint Etienne, even Tom Jones came to the studios in the late ’90s. He made a duet with Nina from The Cardigans, Burning Down The House, a Talking Heads song. It was the opening track on his Reload album. In those days you actually had a lot of young Japanese tourists in town and you wondered what they were doing there, but they all went up to Tambourine Studios to have a look and see if The Cardigans was there.

Here comes some more good-looking music. Good Vibrations by The Facer is next. Then Do You Feel Normal by The Hellacopters is played.

(Do You Get) Excited? by Roxette wraps up today’s Nordic Rox. It’s a track from the Joyride album. It was supposed to be a single, but it never was. However, they did a very nice video for it. You can check it out on YouTube if you are interested. Brilliant vocals as always by Marie Fredriksson. She was amazing on this one.

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!

Sven Lindström and Per Gessle continued their Top30 ’90s songs from Sweden series in the December episode of Nordic Rox.

The guys are counting down from position No. 25 to 21. Sven mentions at the beginning of the show that Per has a brand new single. It’s released by a duo called Per and Lena. PG confirms, but Sven keeps the listeners waiting. Good things come to those who wait, he says.

They kick off the program with some garage rock from Stockholm. Ain’t Coming Home by The Sewergrooves is played. Hemingway by Girl In Red is next. Then comes I’m Gonna Dance by The Mo and l.o.v.e by SHY Martin.

Woman & A Child by Mikael Rickfors, taken from the Judas River album in 1991, kicks off the five songs on the ’90s countdown.

The guys are moving on to a great song that Per really likes. It’s by Andreas Johnson. He used to sing and write songs in the band called Planet Waves. Sven asks Per who made an album called Planet Waves. First Per doesn’t realize what the question was referring to, but after he got it, he says it was Bob Dylan. Sven smiles and says it was just some quick pop quiz here. Mr. G continues that Andreas Johnson had a big solo career starting off with this particular album called Liebling in 1999, just in the final hours of the ’90s. This song that the guys chose was a big international hit for him in Europe. In France, for instance and in England as well. It’s called Glorious produced by Peter Kvint, a great Swedish producer. The song has a chorus you just can’t forget, according to Sven. Per thinks it’s wonderful, it stood the test of time. Sven says Per thinks that the chorus takes over everything and the verse is rather… not bland, but… Per tries to put it into words and explains that you need a neutral verse to get a chorus like that. He thinks it’s an amazing chorus. No wonder it became a major hit.

Sven and Per go into some Swedish lyric songs. Coming up first is a song called Lilla fågel blå (Little Bird Blue) by a songwriter and artist called Staffan Hellstrand. It was a big song for him, his biggest hit so far. Sven adds that it was backed by Swedish garage rock kings, The Nomads, which gave it an edge as well. PG thinks it’s a great song.

The tension rises, the guys are heading for No. 22. They picked Broken Promise Land by Weeping Willows. It sounds a bit of melancholy and that’s basically what it is, Sven says. Per agrees. It was their breakthrough song in 1997. They are still around, making new records, touring. Sven saw the lead singer Magnus Carlson on Swedish television a couple of days ago, so they are very much active.

No. 21 is a song by Marie Fredriksson. It’s another Swedish lyric song, a beautiful ballad called Tro. It can be translated into „faith” or „belief”. Marie made a solo album in 1996 when Roxette took a break. They took a four-year break after 1995, when they finished touring and Marie had her second child. She made a solo album and Tro was the first single. It was also part of a film and it was a really big hit for Marie. It’s a really wonderful song, an amazing song, Per thinks. Sven agrees and he says Marie tried to squeeze in a Swedish solo career between all the Roxette commitments, which were basically taken up all the time otherwise. Per adds that she wrote Swedish stuff that was not really in the pop style. She wanted to do things in Swedish as well. She never felt comfortable writing English lyrics anyway. She had lots of other things on her mind, which was great.

And that wraps up the Swedish ’90s list for this time. On the next show the guys are entering the top 20. So it’s going to be exciting further on.

James by Ex Cops, I Believed by Maria Jane Smith and Sweet Jackie by Sugarplum Fairy are played.

Then comes Bad Blood by Per + Lena. It’s the new single by Per and Lena Philipsson, who is singing with Roxette these days. It’s a little new piece of music that they put together over the summer season. Mr. G thinks it’s cool. Sven thinks it’s a great track and it sounds very inspired. Per says they were inspired and it was great fun making it. He co-wrote it together with a guy called Alex Shield. PG has been working with him a bit in the past on different projects. It’s got a sort of a Stonesy vibe to it. Per likes it and he also likes how Lena is singing on it. She is really cool, Sven thinks. He promises to sit down with Per and Lena to discuss the current tour and next year’s activities, which will be quite a lot. They will still be touring. It’s a big world, Per adds.

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!