Earlier in the week I drew your your attention to the works of Abba, the Swedish pop phenomenon. This put me in mind of the two other great Swedish musical exports Roxette (more of whom in a later post) and Ace of Base. So today I want to remind you of Ace of Base andtheir ability to provide you with a tune that will stay with you all day.
Ace of Base are a group, originally consisting of siblings Jonas Berggren, Linn Berggren and Jenny Berggren, with Ulf Ekberg who formed in 1990. Their name was inspired by the Motorhead song Ace of Spades. They achieved worldwide success following the release of their debut album Happy Nation in 1992. This album was later re-issued as The Sign, and it was certified nine times platinum in the United States, and was the best-selling album of 1994.
The band struggled for recognition at first, but were allowed to use a studio to record some demos. A Jamaican reggae band resided in a studio next door to theirs, leading to a collaboration of ideas. This resulted in a fusion of reggae with pop (dubbed “china reggae” by their Jamaican friends), which became the band’s trademark sound. These early demos failed to convince Telegram to sign the band, and other labels in Sweden still showed no sign of interest. The tracks were eventually sold for a small price to the independent Danish label Mega Records in March 1992. “Wheel of Fortune” was released as a single in Denmark in May, but it failed to chart. A small-budget music video was shot and directed in a small studio by Viking Nielsson and on re-issue in July, the single finally entered the Danish singles chart at No. 6, before rising to No. 2.
Although “Wheel of Fortune” was a success in Denmark, a different song led Ace of Base to take off internationally. In early 1992, they sent producer Denniz PoP a demo tape including a song called “Mr. Ace”. At first he wasn’t particularly impressed, but the tape got stuck in the cassette player in his car. This resulted in him having to listen to it over and over again, and gradually he realized the song’s potential. He’d lost the band’s contact details, but when they called him a few months later he invited them to his SweMix studio to re-record the song in July 1992. The song became “All That She Wants”, and upon its release at the end of August, it quickly climbed to No. 1 on the Danish chart while the previous single was still sitting at No. 2. Within a few months, “All That She Wants” had reached No. 3 in Sweden and had spent eight weeks at No. 1 in Germany. In May 1993, “All That She Wants” consolidated on its European success by topping the chart for three weeks in the United Kingdom.
The group had already started work on a second album, with the working title of The Sign, named after one of the new tracks they had written. Released in the USA in November 1993, it remained in the top three of the Billboard Top 200 for 26 consecutive weeks, and was nominated for Best Pop Album at the 1995 Grammy Awards. Collectively, the different versions of the album reached the No. 1 position in at least 14 countries, and sold more than 21 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling debut albums of all time. The second U.S. single was the album’s title track, “The Sign”, released in December. It was even more successful than the first, spending six weeks at No. 1 and becoming the best-selling single of 1994. It was also a major hit internationally, peaking at No. 2 in the UK and Sweden and at No. 1 in Germany; whilst in Australia it topped the charts for four weeks.
Recorded at the request of Clive Davis, “Don’t Turn Around” was the group’s next single, which had previously been released by Tina Turner as the B-side of her single “Typical Male”, and had been a UK No. 1 hit for Aswad in 1988. The cover version hit the top 5 in the US, UK, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
Their music was finally immortalised on film when ‘The Sign’ was part of a medley sung by the ‘Barden Bellas’ in Pitch Perfect.
