What happened to “The Cardigans?”
An investigation of the complete works
by Benjamin Vogels
My first encounter with the music of the Cardigans was in a telephone shop, where I was conducting a customer survey as a summer job. A TV set was mounted to a wall on which a station was selected that showed music videos on repeat, and one of them was the Cardigans’ latest song „Erase/Rewind“. It was the late 90s, and having cable TV enabled one to watch music video stations like MTV, VIVA and VH1, and naturally, they would bring the videos to the songs of the Cardigans. So far, I had little contact with pop music of any kind as I was mostly interested in classical music, but for some reason, “Erase/Rewind” instantly clicked with me, although the TV set was in the far corner of the room and barely audible.
A couple of days later I walked to the next CD shop, bought a maxi CD of that song and added it to my meager pop music collection, so far comprising Rednex’ “Cotton Eye Joe” and Vangelis’ “Conquest of Paradise.” Besides „Erase/Rewind“, the songs “Explode” as well as “My favorite game” could be found on the CD. It was kind of a hybrid record, since it doubled as a CD rom which included the music videos for “My favorite game.” It was almost immediately clear to me that this maxi CD wouldn’t do, and before long I purchased the predecessors Emmerdale (1994), Life (1995), and First Band on Moon (1996), and eventually, once it was published, the album Gran Turismo (1998), on which “Erase/Rewind” was included.
I became a fan. And as a fan, it struck me almost instantly, how vast the stylistic difference was between Gran Turismo and everything that came before. The Cardigans published two more albums — Long Gone before Daylight (2003) and Super Extra Gravity — but they never returned to the seemingly carefree and sweet-as-candy sound of their earlier albums. Super Extra Gravity appeared in 2005, which was 18 years ago. The Cardigans still perform on concerts, as far as I know, but I think it is highly unlikely that they will ever publish a new album.
What happened to the Cardigans? What was the reason for the stylistic break between First Band on the Moon and Gran Turismo? Why did the band cease to create music after Super Extra Gravity? I don’t know the band personally, nor am I interested in their group dynamics. This investigation on their complete works is purely invested in their music, and I attempt to base my findings on musicological grounds only. Thus, other researchers and like-minded Cardigans-afficionados might arrive at a completely different conclusion, and that’s, at least for me, totally okay.
A Great Divide
For the time the Cardigans were producing and publishing albums, they stayed with the same personnel. Their still exisiting website is of surprisingly little help when it comes to find out who the Cardigans really are, but Wikipedia knows that the members of the band are Nina Persson, Peter Svensson, Magnus Sveningsson, Bengt Lagerberg, and Lars-Olaf Johansson. The website also has a collection of photos, which I don’t share here because of the unclear copyright situation.
The fact that the band remained unchanged during their songwring days is interesting if one considers the following: It is very easy to place every song of the last three albums of the Cardigans on their respective albums. Gran Turismo comprises songs which make heavy use of electronics, are ripe with strange sounds and the lyrics are, all in all, filled to brim with cynicism. Long Gone before Daylight’s songs are deeply melancholic, much more restrained than those of its predecessor, and feature a “country”-spirit not unlike Emmerdale, but totally different at the same time. Super Extra Gravity, eventually, is a swan song that does not carry the cynicism of Gran Turismo, but is nevertheless devoid of any hope, and heavy as the titular “super extra gravity”. I don’t see this clear mapping between the individual songs and the albums on which they appear on the Cardigans’ earlier records. A song from Emmerdale could readily appear on Life, and exactly this is what is happening with “Rise and Shine”, which can be found on both albums. And even though their hit “Lovefool” can be found in First Band on the Moon, this song can’t possibly be confused with one of their later compositions.
It seems that there is, actually, a “Great Divide”, to cite the next to the last song on First Band on the Moon, between this album and Gran Turismo, that is far deeper than the two years between both albums. The divide signifies an eminent step in the artistic development of the band that ripples through till the very last song of Super Extra Gravity and is also palpable in their other projects, like the collaboration with Tom Jones on the song “Burning Down the House” and Nina Persson’s solo project A Camp.
This also means that there is (almost) no development from Emmerdale to First Band on the Moon, or so it seems. However, I will argue that the seed for the sound and spirit of the albums after the “Great Divide” has been laid already on First Band on the Moon, and once the Cardigans nibbled from the fruits their artistic efforts bore, there was no going back.
Abuse and Self-Abuse
A surprising number of Cardigans songs are about abuse by others or self-abuse. This starts in earnest on First Band on the Moon. The story of “Heartbreaker” is, if one takes the lyrics at face value, that of a person, most likely a woman, who is abused by a lover. But it is not only that — she seems, on one hand, to despise the treatment, and on the other hand, be contend with it. “Step on me” is in the same vein, as well as “Choke.” The three songs mentioned bear the physicality of “heartbreaking”, “stepping”, and “choking” already in their respective titles. The music, however, sounds pretty insouciant, which only seems to add to the cruelty. Not every song exudes these vibes. “Happy Meal II” (there is, to my knowledge, no “Happy Meal I”) and “Lovefool”, to name only two, are pure “ear candy”.
Is it possible to take the lyrics not at face value? There might be a chance that the music subverts the rather tough messages, but when I look at the next album, Gran Turismo, that attitude becomes even more unlikely. When one conceives the aforementioned songs really as songs about abuse and self-abuse, than Gran Turismo is the fully-fledged extension of First Band on the Moon.
On Gran Turismo, almost everything is different. The only similarity to First Band on the Moon seems to be the topic of physical and mental (self-)abuse, which the Cardigans now fully embrace. The song “My Favorite Game” is, for me, the best example. It tells the story of a destructive relationship between two persons, but I am tempted to assume that there is, in reality, only one person, who is torn apart by their conflicting emotions. “You” and “I” is the same person, and the “favorite game” is the (failed) attempt to reconcile these two parts of their personality. The outcome of this conflict is violence and pain as is clearly stated in the lyrics.
Something similar can be observed in the song “Good Morning Joan” from Super Extra Gravity. The lyrics of this album and especially this song become increasingly cryptic, but “Joan” also seems to be an extremely troubled person. One of the last lines of the song and most poignant verses of all Cardigans songs goes “My name is yours, can I sleep on your floor”, which is why I believe the narrator of the song is, in fact, Joan herself. They sing about themselves here as well as in “My Favorite Game”, and in both cases they tell the story of a highly disrupted person. To strain the analogy further: The disruption of the protagonist’s personalities in the lyrics of multiple songs is mirrored by the disruption — the “Great Divide” — between the two halves of the Cardigans’ creative output.
It doesn’t stop there. Whereas Gran Turismo is concerned mostly with abuse, Super Extra Gravity deals with the result, or, in other words, with the state of mind of a person who experienced abuse. Examples are “Losing a Friend” and especially “Little Black Cloud”. The latter tells the story of person who is not willing to let an imminent disaster, which comes in form of the titular (and metaphorial) “little black cloud” ruin their current state of mind. This song pairs nicely with the following “In the Round”, which is a story about someone trying to fit in desperately, up to the point where it becomes a matter of live and death. “Holy Love” is a derailed love song to some kind of angelic entity; this is also the song where the words “Super Extra Gravity” appear, as a feature of god. Eventually, the next to the last song is the already mentioned, deeply sobering “Good Morning Joan”.
This covers the fourth and the sixth album, but leaves out the fifth, Long Gone before Daylight. This albums counters the sonic extravaganza of Gran Turismo with a somewhat detached and deeply melancholic country infused style, that nevertheless paves the way for the sobering and at the same time downright obsessive songwriting of Super Extra Gravity. I believe that Long Gone before Daylight is what makes the distance between Gran Turismo and its predecessors so extreme, because it is the one that actually looks back.
Its centerpiece is, without doubt, “And Then Your Kissed Me”. Again, the connection between love and violence is as apparent as in songs from First Band on the Moon and Gran Turismo, but this time the Cardigans have more suitable means to express themselves. It is not quite as acidic and shrill like “My favorite game”, nevertheless it conveys its message of love on the verge of violence equally persuasive. It is not always clear if the songs addresses a person specifically or love in general, but it pushes through the boundaries of what traditionally is considered a love song, and easily so. The colors “black” and “blue” are present here as well as in “My favorite game”; “fist are ready for more” and a “war” in which “no one can be blamed” signify a tumultuous desperation that goes far deeper than simple love-sickness.
From this song onwards, if not earlier, it becomes at least for myself impossible to perceive any subsequent song as a love song but as songs about mental health. Already “A Good Horse”, which comes immediately before “And Then You Kissed Me”, is a trifle too twisted, which I think is also true for “Couldn’t Care Less”. Plenty further example can be found. Love is hopeless in the songs of the Cardigans, and it takes a heavy toll on those who attempt to find it.
For me, it seems that the Cardigans stared down a dark hole at the beginning of Gran Turismo, and they entered a spiral of depression from which they never quite recovered.
Easy listening. Or not?
The above covered mostly the lyrics, but what about the music? When I was listening to one of the earlier records of the Cardigans together with a friend, he classified their music as “easy listening”. Apart from the general meaning of this term for which Wikipedia has an entry, he probably meant that the music of the Cardigans posed not much of a challenge and was not threatening like, for instance, the music by Eminem was threatening. It was also not “danceable” music in the general sense, like Madonna’s “Ray of Light” (1998). In other words, one could sit in the car and listen to a Cardigan record without much risk of breaking spontaneously into dance (or violence), because their music was supposedly easy to listen to. I could definitely see my friend’s point. The music of Emmerdale, Life, and First Band on the Moon, was easy to listen to. What I didn’t see then, was, that this might have been, at least partially, intentional. That behind the cute façade was something much more profound, something for which the Cardigans maybe hadn’t found the means to express yet.
The Cardigans of the mid to end 90s, especially front woman Nina Persson, were almost unbearably cute. It was not only her appearance, but also her style of singing that fit almost to perfectly into the same category that would be populated by artists like Ann Lee (“Two Times”, 1999), Emilia (“Big, big Girl”, 1998), and others. One notable difference, however, would be the almost complete absence of any kind of sexual innuendo, which was ever-present at least in the chart-breaking songs by Whigfield (“Sexy Eyes”, 1995) and Aqua (“Barbie Girl”, 1997), let alone the Spice Girls. That being said, Persson, born in 1974, was only 20 at the time Emmerdale was released, so maybe this is the voice of a woman that age that does not strive to be Amy Winehouse. (However, it should be noted, that her singing abilities, especially intonation and volume, left much to be desired, judging from the live footage of that time circulating on Youtube.)
Although the early songs of the Cardigans check most of the boxes of mainstream pop music, there are some odd but at the same time typical choices, which is the instrumentation. Case in point: The songs “Sick and Tired” and “Over the water”, which employ a flute, creating a “folksy” character, or “Seems hard” with the bassoon at the beginning. Examples can be found throughout the first three albums, and it might be this “folksy” character that contributes to the impression of “easy listening”. Of course, employing an instrument like the flute does not automatically lend a song folk character, and not every song with folk character is easy listening. “You’re the storm” of the already discussed endlessly melancholic Long Gone Before Daylight has a harmonica at the beginning, but apart from that it is neither folk nor easy to listen to.
The concept of easy listening is even more present in their second album, Life, which is arguably the least noticeable and probably the weakest of their six albums. The topics of the songs are not very interesting (“Gordon’s Garden Party”, “Daddy’s car”), and although it contains the otherworldly pristine “Beautiful One”, it cannot be compared to Emmerdale. Don’t get me wrong — the sound of every song on the first two albums is beautiful, but that’s where the story ends. There is no real connection between words and music, and no reason that makes the choice for a particular set of instruments and compositional decisions convincing.
A possible exception would be the above discussed songs from First Band on the Moon, “Heartbreaker”, “Choke” and the likes. The beautiful music could be conceived as subverting the sometimes outright harrowing lyrics. But, to be honest, it would make more sense if it was the other way around.
Gran Turismo is, unsurprisingly, the album where the Cardigans do away with the musical cuteness. It is dominated by synthesizer sounds, both instrumental and ambient, percussion, and strings. It might be, sometimes, over the top, like in “Do You Believe”. Needless to say, that this is, again, a song about of the futility of love. This album feels as if the Cardigans where given a sports car instead of a compact, and they still sometimes struggle to control it. But more often than not they show their masterful craft, for example in “Hanging Around”. The repetitiveness of the music and its insistence on few motifs capture perfectly the indecisiveness of the person in the lyrics, which is still, well, “hanging around”.
Like their inclination for the topic of abuse and self-abuse, the Cardigans also never quite lose this feature of their music, although it is pushed back to a degree in Long Gone before Daylight. Musically, this album could be viewed as a throwback to pre-Gran Turismo days, but without any of its playfulness. It trades the “in your face” quality of Gran Turismo with no little amount of restrain, with the result of music that connects with the lyrics on a more emotional and less haptic level. This is also true for the first (and self-titled) album by A Camp in 2001, and therefore cannot be discounted as coincidence. Songs like “Angel of Sadness”, “I Can Buy You”, and “Song for the Leftovers” breath the same air like Long Gone before Daylight. A very good example for this new quality is the song “For What it’s Worth” in its depiction of borderline desperate love sickness. The song never gets really loud, and it never reaches the bombast of any song on Gran Turismo (no song on Long Gone before Daylight does).
But the music aches from resignation and sorrow, and this cuts deeper than any of the sound effects on Gran Turismo.
On Super Extra Gravity, eventually, this method reaches perfection. Look no further than the first song, “Losing a friend”, where the Cardigans marry the sonic impact of Gran Turismo with the emotional depths of Long Gone before Daylight. Again, a huge desperation is present, paired with the pounding of the snare drum like a pulse that accuses of something terrible: “What have you done?” Every song of Super Extra Gravity could be examined this way, with similar and extraordinary results. Seen this way, Super Extra Gravity becomes the endpoint or at least the apex of a movement set in motion with Gran Turismo at the latest, but rather with the end of First Band on the Moon.
So, what happened to the Cardigans?
I don’t know if there were any soul crushing or live changing events in any of the band members lives that led to the development as it can be observed in their discography. To be honest, I don’t think that any external force or motivation had to be necessarily involved to set this development in motion, although this one review in The Guardian hints in this direction. My best guess is that the artistic growth the Cardigans experienced made it — if not inevitable — highly probable to arrive at a state where no further evolution was possible, but merely repetition. The Cardigans did this once, with Life, and the results were, at least for me, underwhelming and lackluster. But be it as it may, even Beethoven has some stinker in his collected works. What happened to the Cardigans was artistic progress beyond anything that seemed to be possible when one listens to Emmerdale or Life. The band that churned out innocuous songs like “Rise and Shine” and cute and quirky Black Sabbath covers claimed, seemingly, all of a sudden highly relevant topics like abuse and mental health with persuasiveness that previously seemed impossible.
But is it really impossible? Revisiting the early tracks of Emmerdale, one finds songs like “Sick and Tired”, and “Black Letter Day”. These titles ring different, now, that one knows what can be found on the albums of their mature phase. And once the last note of “And Then You Kissed Me II”, probably their saddest song of all, is gone, it becomes clear, there is nothing more to say.
