The Cardigans

History

Peter Svensson and Magnus Sveningsson, both from heavy metal backgrounds, started the band on Halloween 1992 in Jönköping, Sweden. They brought in drummer Bengt Lagerberg, guitarist Mattias Alfheim, and lead singer Nina Persson. The five of them shared a cramped apartment and cut a demo tape, with Persson singing lead on just one track near the end. A&R man Ola Hermanson picked up the demo and signed them to his Trampolene label.

During the making of their first album in 1993, Alfheim left and was replaced by Lagerberg’s friend Lars-Olof Johansson, who stayed with the group from then on. Their debut, Emmerdale, came out in Sweden and Japan in 1994, then got a wider international release in 1997. It featured the Swedish radio hit "Rise & Shine," which a Slitz magazine poll later named the best song of 1994. The rest of 1994 they spent touring Europe and working on Life, which hit stores worldwide in 1995.

Commercial success: 1995–2000

Life sold over a million copies and went platinum in Japan. In 1996, Minty Fresh put out a US version of Life that was actually a mix of tracks from Emmerdale and Life. Riding that success, the Cardigans signed with Mercury Records and released First Band on the Moon globally in 1996. "Lovefool" became a smash everywhere, especially in the US and Japan, where the album went platinum in just three weeks; it also earned gold status in the US.

The "Lovefool" music video used clips from the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, and the song later appeared in the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions. In 1997, the band played themselves on Beverly Hills, 90210, performing "Lovefool" and "Been It" at a college graduation party. Their track "Carnival" was featured in the 1997 film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. The band was asked to write the theme for the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies but turned it down because they were too worn out; Persson has since called that refusal "one of my biggest mistakes."

Solo projects

When the Cardigans first went on hiatus, Nina Persson put out an album with her side project A Camp, while Peter Svensson and Bengt Lagerberg teamed up with Joakim Berg from Kent for the Paus project, and Magnus Sveningsson recorded under the name Righteous Boy. In 2006, Sveningsson revived the band’s old label Trampolene and took on an A&R role, signing the Swedish pop band The Animal Five, who found modest success in Sweden and Germany. Lagerberg and Johansson formed Brothers Of End, releasing three albums: The End in 2009, Mount Inside in 2011, and Shakers Love in 2014, the last of which featured Persson on the song “Heat.”

Persson contributed to The Cake Sale in November 2006, an Oxfam Ireland charity album whose profits supported fair trade. She also sang on the Manic Street Preachers’ 2007 album Send Away the Tigers, specifically on the UK number two single “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough.” During another break in 2007, Persson recorded the second A Camp album Colonia, which came out in early 2009; she toured the US to promote it from late May to mid-June. In 2010, she appeared on the Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse collaborative album Dark Night of the Soul, singing “Daddy’s Gone” with Mark Linkous. Persson released her solo album Animal Heart in 2014.