[MUSIC] What is it about the Swedes?
Sep. 18th, 2005 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI own greatest-hits albums by Ace of Base and Roxette; more credibly, I've discs from The Cardigans and The Hives. This surely speaks to my provincialism, as an English-language listener of popular music. This also speaks to Sweden's relatively high profile in international English-language popular music.
Sweden's official home page observes that, since the 1970s, Sweden has had a very high profile internationally, with a historic emphasis on pop shifting of late to hard rock. This is true, but this is also common knowledge, little more useful than Wikipedia's list of Swedish musicians.
Does Sweden have a higher profile than one might expect in the international market for English-language popular musics? I'm tempted to say so, seeing how Norway has Aha! and Denmark had Aqua. If this assumption is true, why is it true? Other countries with much larger populations--France, Germany, Italy, Japan--don't seem to be similarly prominent in the same markets. Am I missing much? Or, does Sweden's small domestic market force it to rely on exports, in popular music as with much else?
Sweden's official home page observes that, since the 1970s, Sweden has had a very high profile internationally, with a historic emphasis on pop shifting of late to hard rock. This is true, but this is also common knowledge, little more useful than Wikipedia's list of Swedish musicians.
Does Sweden have a higher profile than one might expect in the international market for English-language popular musics? I'm tempted to say so, seeing how Norway has Aha! and Denmark had Aqua. If this assumption is true, why is it true? Other countries with much larger populations--France, Germany, Italy, Japan--don't seem to be similarly prominent in the same markets. Am I missing much? Or, does Sweden's small domestic market force it to rely on exports, in popular music as with much else?
