Swedish Press Sample Jun 2015 Vol 86:05

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June 2015 Vol 86:05 $4.95

Sweden rocks! The Swedish music phenomenon

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2015

Music at Midsummer Aquavit’s star chef Brynolf and Ljung interview

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Swedish Press is the world’s leading magazine on all good things Swedish.

An authority on design, business, culture and travel since 1929, Swedish Press delivers insightful news and commentary in a visually striking format. With a nod to the past, and a peek to the future, Swedish Press is your go-to source for updates and inspiration from Sweden.

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4 Letters to the Editor 5 From the Editor’s Desk

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Swedish Headlines Headline News: Tough times for the Swedish school system News at a Glance Swedes in the News

Business 7 Business News 9 Company File: Spotify Feature 10 Beyond Abba: How Sweden became a global pop powerhouse

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Interview 12 Brynolf & Ljung: The magic of Sweden Heritage 15 Why do Swedes sing in choirs?

Global Swedes 16 Putting Sweden on the map –at home: Charlotte Wiking 17. Putting Sweden on the map – abroad: John Kluge

Lifestyle 18 Top Sju 19 Music: A musical midsummer Hemma hos 20 Design: Sweden delights at the Milan Furniture Fair 2015

21 Treats à la Emma 22 Lär Dig Svenska 23 Comic: Else-Britt and the national identity

In the Loop 24 Landskapsnyheterna 27 Canada, US & Beyond 28 Calendar and Events 29 Ads and Info 30 Sista Ordet 130 years old linen tablecloths find a new purpose: Aprons!

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CONTENTS ( June 2015 )

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National day celebrations in Olai Park, Norrköping. Photo: Rolf Svedjeholm

Cover: Swedish DJ with mixer equipment to control sound and play music. Photo: Sergey Nivens

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Swedes in the News

70 years of peace and Pippi Woman of the year

Inventor, designer and entrepreneur Petra Wadström has been awarded SWEA’s Årets Svenska Kvinna 2015 prize. Her best-known innovation ‘Solvatten’ uses solar energy to purify drinking water, a technology that has changed the lives of women in developing countries in particular. The award, along with three new SWEA scholarship recipients, will be presented at a special dinner in Malmö on 13 August.

Ek launches music event

Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify (see Company File) and Avicii’s manager Ash Pournouri have announced a major new tech and music event called

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Lindgren’s war diaries released

Avicii and Volvo For their latest Swedish superstar collaboration, Volvo have teamed up with music producer Avicii. The campaign, called ‘A New Beginning’, features a rework of Nina Simone’s classic tune ‘Feeling Good.’ It is the first time Volvo has used a purely social media campaign. “We have ambitious goals for the music video to be Volvo’s most viewed on Youtube,” said Alain Visser, VP of Marketing.

Zlatan in hot water

Astrid and her daughter Karin. Photo: Saltkråkan

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he diaries written by Astrid Lindgren during the Second World War have recently been published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. The diaries tell of everyday life in Stockholm, of world events and the actions of the Swedish government.

Lindgren’s best-loved character, Pippi Longstocking, also turns 70 this year – an anniversary which will be celebrated with events at Skansen and Astrid Lindgren’s World in Vimmerby, among others.

Symposium Stockholm to be launched this June.

Running from June 8-13th, Stockholm will host the Denniz Pop Awards, the Polar Music Prize, Avicii Fest, Summerburst festival and the Brilliant Minds Conference, the symposium’s centrepiece, among other events.

Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic received a four-match suspension after comments he made attacking France and its referees. The controversial Malmö-born footballer, who plays for Paris SaintGermain, called the referee in a game against Bordeaux ‘an idiot’ and said that PSG ‘are too good for this country.’ Ligue 1 officials have now banned him from playing in upcoming PSG games against Nice, Lille, Metz and Nantes.

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Company File

Technology revolutionizing the music industry

By Veronika Skärlund #Feelgoodfriday, Dinner Lounge and Soul’n’The City.

Those are not the latest HBO-series, but a sample of the music lists on offer browsing Spotify on a Friday in May. Streaming is said to be the future of music, and since its start the Swedish company Spotify has been at the forefront.

Spotify was first launched in Sweden and a number of other European countries in 2008, since then the company’s spread has been steady. Quoted in an article in the New Yorker, Daniel Ek, one of the founders of the company, says the idea was to create a product better than piracy: “It’s not like people want to be pirates. They

just want a great experience. So we started sketching what that would look like,” Ek said.

In four months Ek and his colleagues had a working prototype.

The hard part was, and has continued to be, selling the idea to the music industry. The fact that the Swedish record industry’s Daniel Ek CEO & Co-Founder revenues grew between 2008 and 2011 was crucial in persuading big record labels to sign license agreements for the much bigger U.S. market, where Spotify was launched in 2011.

Today the company is established in 58 countries, Canada being one of the lastMartin Lorentzon est additions, Chairman of the and reaches out Board and CoFounder to more than

60 million users. It claims to have more then 30 million songs available to the subscribers, and states that another 20 000 are being added every day. Still, the company has been running at a financial loss most years, and the debate on whether streaming sites such as Spotify are helping or harming the industry (or more specifically: musicians) is still ongoing.

Today, the company is spending more resources than ever on creating creative playlists, encouraging users to share their own favourites both on the Spotify application and on social media sites such as Facebook, which entered a partnership with Spotify in 2011. Depending on what you’ve been listening to previously the company uses advanced programming to suggest music tailored to your specific taste. In the future, the hope is to add more information, such as your current relationship status on Facebook or the weather in your area, to the equation.

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Beyond Abba: How Sweden became a global pop powerhouse

By Lara Andersson

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hat do Britney Spears’s “...Baby One More Time,” Kelly Clarkson’s screaming break-up anthem “Since You’ve Been Gone,” and the frostedtipped, fresh-faced boy bands of the 90’s all have in common? The answer: rooms of Scandinavians who work day and night in their Stockholm studios to pump out billboard worthy melodies.

Stenhamra-native Max Martin is without doubt the reigning king of pop-song writing.

Originally a punk performer in his own hair-metal band, It’s Alive, Martin opted for a more behind the scenes approach when he began working for Denniz PoP at Cheiron studios in 1993. Years of training paid off when Martin co-wrote and co-produced the Backstreet Boys’ 1997 hit “Quit Playing Games (with My Heart).” His career soared and to date he has written 18 number-1 tracks (Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” and “Dark Horse,” Britney Spears “…Baby One More Time,” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” to name just a few).

Alongside Max Martin’s name on pop-song credits, you’re likely to find several other highprofile Scandinavians. Notable Swedish songwriters/ producers include Shellback, who co-wrote Taylor Swift’s anthemic “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” and several other hit-titles with Martin; Klas

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Åhlund, who has collaborated with the likes of Robyn, Britney Spears, Jordin Sparks and Ke$ha; and Sweden’s new rising star Tove Lo, who began her foray into music as a topline writer for Max Martin’s 2013 production entity Wolf Cousins before releasing her debut pop-record Queen of the Clouds in 2014.

With the abundance of Swedish songwriters, we must ask, what sets Swedish songs apart from those crafted in the rest of the world? Most simply put, Swedes prioritise melody over groove, beat or even text. Take for example, Max Martin’s devilmay-care attitude towards the grammatical rules of the English language when he convinced popstar Ariana Grande to sing the nonsensical lines “Now that I’ve become who I really are,” and “I only want to die alive,” on her hit song “Break Free” simply because it sounded better. As founding Ace of Base member Ulf Ekberg said to The National newspaper in 2011, For Sweden [melody is] number one and always has been…while for the Americans, it’s the lyrics first, production second and melody last… Because of this focus on lyrics some of the American songs are complicated and can sometimes be not much fun. While for us, we always try to reach as many people as we can, so we have feel-good melodies and simple lyrics so everyone can have fun.

The Swedish love of melody has paid off: artists like Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, Bon Jovi, Charli XCX, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry are known to frequent Stockholm to make music magic.

Still, the mystery remains: why Sweden?

Why is an isolated Scandinavian country, formerly known as the land of Vikings and Pippi Långstrump, an international music hub? We may never know the exact reason, but it seems that we can’t simply blame the long, harrowing winters for keeping writers in the studio (though, undoubtedly, the 3pm darkness doesn’t hurt).

Ola Johansson, in his essay, Beyond ABBA: The Globalization of Swedish Popular Music, tries to answer precisely this question with an in-depth cultural exploration.

To begin, he proposes that Sweden is a country that loves its role models.

Following ABBA’s success in the 1974 Eurovision song contest, Swedes began to think of pop-music as a more alluring craft and the country’s music scene quickly matured. Yet another hypothesis, supported by economic geographers, is the fact that Swedes are particularly quick in picking up on trends. Sweden has created some of the hottest exports, ranging from H & M, to Ikea, to Skype, to Spotify, so it comes as no surprise that they should be at the front lines of the music industry, pushing the envelope with fresh ideas. Perhaps most unique to Sweden, however, is the fact that

the government supports music programs for its citizens. A 2004 Swedish-language study reported that roughly thirty percent of children attend publicly subsidized after school music programs. Considering the fact that Max Martin accredits his success to his early start in music, such after school programs are essential to grooming the next generation of hit-makers.

There’s no shortage of catchy music in the tight-knit Stockholm music scene. While Tove Lo, Lykke Li, Icona Pop and Robyn have secured fan bases around the world, there are countless acts brimming with talent that have yet to make it across the pond to North America. Noonie Bao has been writing for big-artists since she was 18 and is releasing promising new material following her 2013 track “I could be the One” with Avicii vs Nicky Romero. Yet another artist, Sirena, has recently released her EP, Hearts, and seems poised for success beyond Scandinavia.

With the lengthening days and the impending twenty-four hour sunlight, we can be sure to expect a flurry of up-tempo pop-music from these artists and more to give life to our summer soundtracks and perpetuate the Swedish hit-making phenomenon.

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Brynolf & Ljung – The magic of Sweden

By Victoria Peterson

SP: How does someone get started in becoming a magician?

PB/JL: Just do it!

who have made it on the global stage, so why not us?

Does it make any difference where you perform your show?

Yes it does. We adapt different things to different countries, maybe not in the choice of material, but more in the tonality. There are also small differences in references in different parts of the world that you have to take into account.

How fast can a person progress in magic?

Pretty fast, you can be pretty good in a year or two. IF you put in the work required.

What are the secrets for performing magic in order to get the biggest applause?

Practice, go up there and try it out!

You have got to fail to learn.

Where’s the money at in being a magician?

Corporate gigs mainly, until you are big enough to be able to do public shows and sell tickets.

How does your Swedishness play into your success?

We think it is a good starting point.

Sweden is often looked upon as a little exotic, sexy country and it has a pretty good image amongst Americans.

Do you take inspiration from Sweden?

Yes we do! Since we are born and raised here we are children of our country and of our time. We have a very good artist legacy to live up to and we take that very seriously! ABBA, Roxette, Robyn, Zlatan, Lundqvist and Avicii are just a few of the Swedes

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Duktig indeed. As seen on Britain’s Got Talent, Peter Brynolf & Jonas Ljung, aka Brynolf & Ljung, are Sweden’s most talked-about magicians.

Constantly travelling the world, they have won a silver medal in The World Championships of Magic and their own tv-series just finished airing for Swedish TV4. How did it all start out, and what are the tricks of the trade for a magician? Victoria Peterson recently connected with the artistic and dynamic duo.

Swedes are sometimes seen as stiff and boring – so do you feel that the two of you are uniquely extrovert Swedes?

Ha-ha! Yes we are kind of extra extrovert, but there are extrovert people in Sweden as well, even though it might not look that way at first sight.

Have you ever been solo magicians?

How did you meet & how long have you been together?

We started out as solo acts. We met at the Gothenburg magic association and 10 years ago we did our first gig together. We soon realised that we had

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something unique together that we could develop into something more.

We could do things that you never could do on your own. We also get a better dynamic in the show, being two.

Swedes are known for having a dry sense of humor that’s hard to understand. Do you feel that is accurate? How would you describe Swedish humor?

As in all countries, there are probably tons of different kinds of humor. At the bottom of things people tend to laugh when they recognise a situation or a feeling (or when they don’t understand). If we try to pinpoint the humor of Sweden it might have one foot in the English, Monty Python kind of humor, one foot in academic humor and one foot in the American kind of humor as well… wait that’s three legs!

It could be dry indeed and maybe hard for foreigners to understand. But since we are Swedes we cannot understand why people don’t get it… it’s just funny!

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like that was actually a really demanding problem. I think we worked 16 hours a day for two months to get those 90 seconds together. And in the end it all looks so easy, and no one can understand that it could possibly be that much work behind the scenes.

What is your favourite magic trick?

The one we performed at the Semifinals in Britain’s Got Talent! You can check it out on youtube.

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Actually all venues have different things to offer. The close-up venue has a very personal feeling where magic happens in the hands of the spectator. On larger stage venues you can play with totally different concepts and work with other kind of magic. So every venue adds something special into the magic and creates its own kinds of magic.

What is your most difficult magic trick?

Hard to say… Tampering with people’s minds and making them forget things is really tough.

Who are your role models for being a magician?

We try not to look too much to the magic community when looking for role models. But of course, David Copperfield and Penn & Teller must be mentioned as people we grew up watching.

Where is your favourite venue to perform your magic act?

What are your career goals as magicians?

We have a few different goals. Doing more TV in Sweden and abroad, maybe the US would be a lot of fun, but also doing Las Vegas of course and maybe something similar in Asia.

Photos © Brynolf & Ljung

How would you describe your presentation style?

Humor combined with strong visual magic. It is important for us that people get more than they expect.

Describe the most difficult scheduling problem you have faced as magicians?

I would say the Semi-finals in Britain’s Got Talent was the worst. Getting everything together and up and running in two months, with a huge production

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