Per Gessle and Sven Lindström offer a Lisa Miskovsky special on the October episode of Nordic Rox. PG thinks she is a great singer with a wonderful voice and she is a wonderful artist. She released her first album in 2001. Still going strong. Sven adds she is a great songwriter too.
Before the special starts, the guys talk about The Cardigans, a Swedish band that wasn’t from Malmö, but they moved to Malmö. Love Fool was a big hit in the States, but now the guys play a song from the Life album called Carnival. Swedish indie from 1995.
Ooh I Like It! by The Creeps is the next song. It’s produced by Clarence Öfwerman, who produced Roxette. Sven says it sounds really good. The band is from Älmhult, the town that made IKEA famous. Marit Bergman is next with her beautiful This Is The Year from 2002.
The guys are moving in the direction of Per Gessle and play the latest single, Vandrar i ett regn. It’s to celebrate the Swedish legend, Pugh Rogefeldt. Sven mentions they did a Nordic Rox special with Pugh. Per says he passed away unfortunately in May this year. Per says he was part of a tribute concert, an homage to him, and he released a single with one of Pugh’s songs from 1975. Sven says it’s from a live album and he doesn’t think there was a studio version. It was only released live and it was sort of a ’50s pastiche. Per adds he always loved that song. He was actually there at the show where it was recorded when he was 16 years old. The double album became a big hit for Pugh. When Per recorded the song himself, he removed all these ’50s influences. He made it into a little bit more like his style instead. Sven thinks it’s a great move. It became something else, a wonderful pop track with Per’s guitarist Ola’s slide guitar there as well. Per is sure a lot of people of course don’t understand the song, because it’s in Swedish, but it’s got all those typical elements of Pugh’s wonderful lyrics. He had his own style. Sven says he is called the founding father of Swedish rock music, and not only because of the music, but also the lyrics. PG says he was the first one to do rock music in Swedish. In a credible way, Sven adds. Per is very happy to be able to participate and to pay some tribute to him.
Electric by the fabulous band Melody Club is next. They are from Sven’s hometown, Växjö. Great stuff coming out of that town, Sven says. The guys are laughing.
Sven and Per move on to the Lisa Miskovsky special. Per says she is a great singer and she is from the North. Her father was from the old Czechoslovakia and her mother was from Finland. She had made a debut album in 2001, which was an instant success. Sven adds she started writing songs at an early age, but she was super talented in many other ways. She was really close to become a member of the Swedish national team in snowboard. And she played hockey, Per adds. But the songwriting and the singing eventually got the upper hand. In 2001 she made her first single Driving One Of Your Cars. Mr. G says it’s very special. It sounds exactly like how pop music sounded in 2001. Sven agrees.
Cool track coming up next, Lady Stardust from Lisa’s second album Fallingwater. Sven doesn’t know how it did internationally. He is not really sure about Lisa’s international career actually. Per thinks it went so-so. This was a really big album in Sweden. She started working with Joakim Berg from the band Kent who co-wrote songs with her and also co-produced. That made a big difference style-wise. This is a really cool album and Lady Stardust was a big, big song on the radio. Sven remembers you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing it. Big radio track.
Sven says it’s starting to heat up now, because they are moving out to the international big hit scene. Per says, what was interesting was that Lisa Miskovsky had this song called Another Shape Of My Heart, which eventually turned out to be Shape Of My Heart by the Backstreet Boys. Sven explains that Lisa made a demo of this song and it got in the hands of Max Martin. PG says Max Martin was producing and writing for Backstreet Boys at the time. In the Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sven adds. Sven doesn’t know if you can say that he kept half of Lisa’s ideas. Per says he doesn’t know, he wasn’t there. Haha. Sven says he wasn’t there either. Max Martin added some magic to it and just to let you know what the difference is, the guys play Another Shape Of My Heart, the Lisa Miskovsky version, and then the Shape Of My Heart version by Backstreet Boys.
Sven asks Per if he has ever written something similar to a boy band tune. Per says not that he knows of. Sven is curious about how it is for Per as a songwriter what started in the boy band era that there were multiple songwriters working together. Sometimes you can see up to 5 or even 10 songwriters. PG says it’s a different thing, he comes from a different generation. He is used to working alone or with one partner. But nowadays you do everything on the computer and you send your files to each other and people add things all the time. So it’s a different ball game. New times, new methods.
One more track is played by Lisa Miskovsky, also from the Fallingwater album. It was Lisa’s second album. A Brand New Day is Per’s favorite Lisa Miskovsky track. He thinks she sings beautifully on this one. It’s co-written by Lisa herself and Joakim Berg from Kent. A wonderful track from 2003. This wraps up the Lisa Miskovsky special. The guys mention once again that she is a great songwriter, performer, singer, hockey player and snowboarder.
The guys have an ace up their sleeves in the shape of Bob Hund. A wonderful band, according to Per. They play Tralala lilla molntuss. PG can’t translate it. Sven says if you think it’s a bit difficult to understand Thomas Öberg, the singer’s lyrics, don’t feel too depressed, because he is coming from Helsingborg in the South of Sweden, and a lot of Swedes have actually a bit trouble hearing what he says.
Mando Diao’s The Band is next and Toys And Flavors by The Hellacopters is the last song, from the album High Visibility released in 2000.
Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.
Still is from the Bag of Trix comment videos recorded by Anders Roos.
Thanks for your support, Sven!