Ace of Base
Ace of Base is a Swedish pop group, formed in 1987, originally consisting of siblings Jonas, Linn, and Jenny Berggren, with Ulf Ekberg.
Ace of Base
They achieved worldwide success following the release of their debut album, Happy Nation in 1992. Later re-issued as The Sign, it was certified nine times platinum in the United States[6] and was the best-selling album of 1994. One of the most successful debut albums of all time, it was the first to produce three No. 1 singles on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart: "All That She Wants", "The Sign" and "Don't Turn Around".[7]
They continued to score hit singles throughout the 1990s, with songs such as "Beautiful Life", "Lucky Love", "Cruel Summer" and "Life Is a Flower". The group has sold 30 million copies of their first four studio albums, making them the third most successful Swedish group of all time, behind ABBA and Roxette.
Despite being largely inactive since 2012, the group has never officially disbanded. In the last decade, they have released a number of demo tracks, first via their Facebook page, then in 2015 on the compilation album Hidden Gems. A follow-up called Hidden Gems, Vol. 2 was included in the 2020 boxset All That She Wants: The Classic Collection. Jenny Berggren continues to perform the group's hits in solo concerts around the world.
History[edit]
1987–1992: Formation[edit]
In 1987, following several years as part of a new wave and punk cover band called G Konrad (named after Hungarian author György Konrád), Jonas Berggren formed a band with two friends, Johnny Lindén and Niklas Tränk, for a school project; his sisters Linn and Jenny later joined as singers. The new band went through several names: New Arbat Avenue after an avenue in Moscow; CAD (Computer-Aided Disco); and Tech-Noir, French for black technology, after a nightclub in the film The Terminator.[8] They toured the clubs of Sweden with self-written material, techno inspired by 1980s Italo disco and house music.
Johnny left the group in 1989, and Niklas made his departure known by failing to turn up to a gig at Bältespännarparken in Gothenburg on August 4, 1990, instead attending a Rolling Stones concert on the other side of town. Jonas asked his friend Ulf Ekberg to stand in for Niklas.
Inspired by a Jamaican reggae band who resided in a studio next door to theirs, they experimented with a fusion of reggae and pop – dubbed "China reggae" by their Jamaican friends – which became the band's trademark sound.[9]
After responding to an ad in the paper Göteborgs-Posten, the new quartet started working in the studio with record producer John Ballard,[10] and decided to come up with a new name in order to make a fresh start, as well as to avoid confusion with another band with the same name (Tech Noir) who were attracting bad reviews. Linn said: "No one could pronounce the name of the group and nobody could remember it." They settled on Ace of Base in early 1991, after Ulf was inspired by the Motörhead song "Ace of Spades".[11][12]
In an interview in 2018, Ulf explained:
Studio albums