Switched on Pop - Why we can't resist Swedish pop (ft. Zara Larsson) ICYMI

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

In case you missed it: How does a country of 10 million people dominate the global pop charts? From ABBA's Eurovision breakthrough to Max Martin's methodical hit-making, Sweden has quietly engineered a kind of musical Stockholm Syndrome: we've all become captives to their sound without realizing it. Listen to the crystalline vocal production and deceptively simple chord progressions in tracks by Lisa, Childish Gambino, and Addison Rae, and you're hearing Sweden's sonic fingerprint so embedded in pop's DNA that it now defines the genre itself. We sit down with pop star Zara Larsson to explore her love letter to home, "Midnight Sun." As she puts it, "I can't really leave Sweden; it's just something that's like a part of who I am," a sentiment that captures how Swedish pop's unique blend of melancholy and euphoria, mirroring the country's extreme seasons, has made us all willing prisoners of Stockholm's musical empire. Songs Discussed Lisa ft. Rosalia: "New Woman" Childish Gambino: "Lithonia" Addison Rae: "Fame Is a Gun" Bleachers: "Tiny Moves" Zara Larsson: "Midnight Sun" Robyn: "Show Me Love" Robyn: "Dancing on My Own" Nirvana: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Brad Mehldau: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch Pet Insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada.

All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need.

It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-copy, commerce and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-U for free at O-D-O-D-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-D-O-O. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sleon. Conspiracy theory alert. Uh-oh. Nate, does Sweden secretly control all of pop music? This is a new one. You're thinking about it. Well, Max Martin is probably the biggest hitmaker of the last three decades.

He's Swedish. Yeah. Maybe there's something there, Chuck. Okay, okay. And he's making a comeback. Taylor Swift has her forthcoming album. Many are very excited about it, specifically because she's bringing back Max Martin, who helped her make the 1989 album, which really helped her crossover into pop music.

We've reported on the impact of Max and the world of Swedish pop music in the past all the way back on episode 20. Wow. But given that he's coming back on that record and that the impact of Swedish pop music, I think, has only grown since we reported it way back when. I wanted to go do a little bit of a refresher. See if we can hear the sound of Swedish pop music. See if we can identify it. I'm so down, Charlie. From Abba to Max Martin to Robin, I mean, it's an incredible reach that this relatively small country has had in the global world. of pop. So I want to understand that phenomenon better. Yeah, this haven of social democracy that invests heavily in the arts and arts education happens to be fourth globally for English proficiency has had an untold impact on pop music. As you said, Abba, really one of the defining moments, their win on the Eurovision stage with Waterloo brings global attention. Of course, in our lifetime, Dennis Pop's Chiron Studios that helps build the careers of Ace of Bass, Robin, mentors Max Mark, We get in sync, Backstreet Boys, Brittany, and so many others out of that studio.

And it really transcends style. There is, of course, pop, R&B, rock, metal, Latin, K-pop. In the 2010s, Avichy and the Swedish House Mafia had a huge impact on the sound of dance music. And of course, Sweden is the center of music tech being home to Spotify and many music tech startups. Really, I think that, you know, Stockholm is like Silicon Valley of pop music and so many ways and its impact is so diffuse today that it's basically just the sound of pop music.

And to get to know the sound of Sweden, in a bit, I'm going to talk with Zara Larson, one of the biggest pop stars in Sweden, about the sounds that she identifies from our home. But before we get there, I want to play a little game with you to see if you and I can locate the sound of Sweden. I want to call this game, I slid in on a shrimp sandwich. Wow, that is a deep callback to an episode we recorded with our friend, and Chris Duffy, host of How to Be a Better Human. I want to say nine years ago.

Yep. And as I recall, this is the Swedish idiom that equates to, what we, in America, we would say, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Yes. Slid in on a shrimp sandwich. And we use it as a game to identify some of the sort of Swedish to English mistranslations that occurred in pop music, songs like cake by the ocean, for example. I want to extend this shrimp sandwich metaphor. See if we can just hear the sounds of Sweden broadly in four contemporary hits. I'm going to play you some songs.

You don't know what they are. You've not heard them. Maybe you've heard them in the background at some point in your life. Okay. You earn shrimp sandwiches for how many Swedish connections you can make to these songs. Got it? Got it. Ground rules make sense?

Kind of. This is chaos. Wait, I'm the shrimp sandwich. I'm sliding on it. No, no. You're earning shrimp sandwiches. You're trying to. Oh, okay.

Yes. You're trying to get as many shrimp sandwich. sandwiches as you can. Perfect. All right. Our first song, Lisa's new woman featuring Rosalia. Whoa. So of course, Lisa is a member of the K-pop group Black Pink. She grew up in Thailand. She is a global phenomenon. You can catch her at the F1 Grand Prix or on the latest season of the White Lotus. She has this great collab with Rosalia. What kind of song is this? What does this have to do with Sweden? Well, I feel like the clues are going to be in the lyrics and some of the production and harmonic choices. I'm going to summon all of my Max Martin knowledge here and try and suss some of these Swedishisms out.

Okay. First of all, very cool track. Yeah. Now, let's talk about that line with the aura, right? Yes. Can we hear that again? Reving up my a O-O-O-O-O-O-O-A.

Yeah, this is like maybe one site where you could detect a certain Swedish influence. Playing with language in that way, taking a word and sort of breaking it down into pure sound

a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a. Maybe the meaning is less important than the rhythm and the feel of it. And then let's move to the production. I detect the use of the lead vocals from Lisa as a part of the accompaniment as well. I can't say this for sure, but there's this sound in the mix that's like maybe a processed vocal that becomes this percussive sort of driving effect. Oh, it's almost like a DJ scratching. I feel like that's part of the word aura chopped up, processed,

and then turned into this sort of percussive melodic fragment. What's it reminding you of? Well, it reminds me of Max Martin's production on Ariana Grande's Into You, where they take a fragment of the voice and process it into the baseline for the song. So there's this economy of means. You want to reuse material in creative ways rather than, then take something entirely new and put it into the track. So you're hearing hints of producer Max Martin and his techniques?

It's called the Swedish principle of reduce, reuse, recycle. Why introduce new musical material into the ecosystem when we can reuse music we've already have in the track in creative ways? Well, it also creates a sort of glue. It keeps it within the universe of the song rather than grabbing some random sample, right? It brings you deeper in as a listener. Right. this song is produced by Max Martin.

No way. It is frequent collaborator, Ilya, who really blew up with his collaborations with Ariana Grande. Ilya, born in Iran, grew up in Denmark, moved to Sweden, went to Hollywood, to the Musicians Institute. So a global, multifaceted producer with Ilya

and Max Martin on this track. We also have songwriting contributions from Tuvlu. Tuvlu. Ah, the Swedish singer-songwriter behind tracks like, habits and cool girl. Very cool. We also have that amazing feature by Rosalia and check out what happens in the track after the chorus when we go into Rosalia's verse. Wow, that was was cool. Wow, right? What's happening? Well, we have this beat switch, the tempo changes,

it slows down, the texture becomes more sparse. In the background, we have, I think, the melody from the new woman chorus, but it's become something very different. Is this the Swedish maxim of adapting to new trends? Because this kind of beat switch reminds me of something you would encounter in the world of hip-hop, a Travis Scott production. in like sicko mode, perhaps. And I feel like one of the thing that Swedish producers are really good at is having their finger on the pulse of what's

happening in pop music. And maybe this shows a certain cutting edge sensibility. Or... Or... Even more cutting edge, Nate. Yes. The world of K-pop. K-pop has to have a beat switch up. It has to have multiple genres.

And so if you're going to have a Lisa track with Rosalia, do K-pop tracks have these tempo changes in them? That seems Like, for sure, K-pop tracks are written by people who love to show off their music school capacity to modulate into new keys and have tempo switches and do all kinds of surprising things. Fetch me the K-pop track with a, I mean, this is like a 10 to 20 BPM tempo drop. So find me that. It's very unusual. I think it really earns it because what do we have,

Lisa saying, I'm a new woman. And then literally a new woman steps off into the stage. It's Rosalia. It's a total different vibe. Oh, it's a literal. Old New Woman, yeah. So I think you've earned yourself probably at least three shrimp sandwiches here. Wow, this is so arbitrary. Okay, great. Yeah, serve them up. You're going to need some roll aids after this conversation.

All right, let's move on to our next song, Childish Gambino's Lithonia. Because nobody gives a fuck. Gives a fuck. A lot happening here, Chuck. Cool track. I mean, Swede-wise, this has got to be a Ludwig Gordson production, right? Ding, ding, ding, yes, correct. Ludwig Gornson, the composer and producer, meets Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino.

While making the TV show community, they go on to produce all of the Childish Gambino records together, such as their album, Awaken My Love, which featured Redbone. And, of course, Gorensen has gone on to compose soundtracks for so many films, Black Panther, sinners, etc. So yes, Nate, you have collected another shrimp sandwich for this connection. Okay. And I should point out, this is the second track off of Bando Stone and the New World, an album and maybe forthcoming Phil about an apocalyptic future where a singer has to join forces with a woman and her son to fight off various monsters from the past. Big concept album.

He also says that it's going to be the last childish Gambino project, but he's also said that like 17 times. So we'll see. I mean, music-wise, well, a few things. I mean, the intro here with this voice singing over an electric organ. You know, this makes me think of the sophisticated harmonic language that you detect in a lot of Swedish productions. I would say here it's a little bit sort of just throwback R&B kind of chords. Nothing too fancy. Okay, fair.

I'll save that for another example then. What about when we get to the pre-chorus? I felt like this was very ABBA coded this section. What's the best piano example? Is it Mamma Mia? Or Dancing Queen, maybe? We have the bright upbeat pianos that remind us of Abba. Yeah.

Another shrimp sandwich for you, Nate. What do you think of the next turn of texture? To the world of alternative rock? Thought of a couple of different things. Okay. Reminded me a little bit of like, I was like, I know that there's a, there's got to be, what is the Swedish indie rock? band from the 2000s.

Do you remember The Hives? Are they Swedish? Reckless, heavy, fuzzed-out guitars. God, that kicks ass. I had no idea they were from Sweden, straight up. Yeah. I thought they were from Detroit or something. That's great.

They got the energy. And the other thing we could point to is Max Martin is also a producer on this track. And he, of course, started out in rock and 80s hair medley bands. And so we hear some of that heavy influence. So we have Max here again. Yeah. What was his band called? It's Alive, I think.

Is that what it was? Yeah. I don't remember. Okay. So what do we got? I think you got five shrimp sandwiches so far. Earlier in the summer, we spoke about Addison Ray's album Addison. We covered a lot of interesting music off of that album.

For sure. I don't believe that we listen to fame is a gun. It's a good one. Oh, I can kind of see the shrimp like face. into the horizon right now because I am struggling to sweetishize this. Let me see if I can go to you into a realization. Yeah. What genre would you place this in?

Like throwback to late 90s, early 2000s rave techno or something. Yeah, sort of dance pop. Okay. Dance pop. Okay, yeah. And what emotion are you getting from the vocal that claims to be living in this glamorous life where fame is a gun. This sense of ironic detachment, sort of dissociation, perhaps.

So upbeat dance pop, four to the four, makes you want to dance, but some kind of darker ironic detachment? Yes. You're looking at me like I should have some profound realization. Who does that so well? Who does that so well? That's, uh... Maybe irony is not the right thing, but rather the contrast of the feeling that you need to celebrate

despite some underlying darker feelings where you're dancing all by yourself. Okay, we're talking about Robin. Yeah. Yeah. Dancing on my own. I see. I see. The pulsing body moving beat on top of which you have these melancholy profound lyrics.

That's cool. I can hear it. That simple beat, even those little high melodic moments, both feel very connected to fame as a gun for me anyway. Yeah. Robin, of course, got her start in the Chiron Studios world. One of Max's first hits was working with Robin. That's Robin's Show Me Love from 19 to 95, written by Max Martin and Dennis Pop, and Robin and produced by Max Martin and Dennis Pop.

Okay. That's like the opposite of what we just heard. No, I'm just saying she's got an excuse to listen to that song. True. All right. 100%. I see. I see.

I'm taking away a shrimp sandwich for that. So I also need to point out that the predict. The producer of Addison Ray's whole album, one of the two women producers who worked on that album, which is kind of rare and worth celebrating on its own. But one of them is Swedish. Elvira is her producer name. And along with Luca Closer, they produced, I want to say, every track on the Addison album. Yeah, that's so rad.

Basically, three women in a room, making an awesome record together. Our friend Kristen Robinson at Billboard did a really nice profile of them, if you want to learn more about that production duo. Oh, cool. So seven or eight shrimp sandwiches going on now, you're going to have a stomach ache. And let's see why there wasn't just one per track, but it's obviously too late. So the reason why is that I once had a layover in Stockholm. Yeah. And it was very early in the morning. And we had been out very late the night before, and had not slept much, and we're not feeling that great. And the only thing available to eat was shrimp sandwiches for days. And it was the last thing that you wanted at 7 o'clock in the

I don't know. I could probably house a shrimp sandwich any time a day. Is it almost lunchtime? Is that why we're fixating on? Sorry, here we go. I have one last track for you, and I'm hoping to stump you. This is Bleacher's tiny moves off of their 2024 self-titled album, Bleachers. Wow, I've never heard that song. I like it. Oh, that's cool. It's a great record. Jack Antonoff. Worked with Taylor Swift, who's worked with Max. What's the connection? What is it?

The answer is producer Patrick Berger, born in Uppsala, Sweden. He goes way back in the world of 2010s pop. Charlie XX's boom clap. I love it with iconopop. He's worked with Lana. He's worked with Carly Ray Jepson. And he also produced Robbins Dancing on my own. Patrick Berger, he also produced one of my favorite Santa Gold tracks.

really can't get enough of myself which i have opined on on this podcast before if you want to go check that out but yeah interesting he's worked with jack antonoff on tracks like take the sadness out of saturday night and others and was a major contributor to the bleachers self-titled album which sounds nothing like the rest of swedish pop so that was definitely a little bit of a left feel but if you want to hear the most swedish of swedish possible songs we have a song from this summer that I think alone is worth at least 10 shrimp sandwiches. It's Zara Larson's Midnight Sun. Such a good track.

Big hit in our household. This is a midnight song kiss, getting on the red sky laying on your chest like this. Hold me like the pebbles in your hand in there you'll send a sand. This is a song about how great Sweden is by one of the great Swedish pop stars working today. Nice. and I had the opportunity to chat with Zara Larson about this song, about her love of Sweden, about how Swedish pop has taken over the globe. And so when we come back, my conversation, Mazar Larson, on Midnight Sun. Well, Zara, I'm very happy to you here. Thank you for joining me on Switchdown Pop.

Thank you for having me. I want to talk about your latest album, Midnight Sun, which you say is an ode to the summer in Sweden where the sun basically is shining 24 hours. It's shining. And, you know, Sweden has so much to offer the... the world of pop music, you included. I want to get to know the place that you're singing about. And so I thought we could do that with your album, single, name, midnight sun, an ode to Swedish summer. Let's listen for a second. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it.

Hold me like the pebbles in your hand. So fun. It's so fun. I love it. Can you start by telling me what that light feels like? What is the feeling of the Swedish midnight sun? Yeah. Is there like a particular memory where you could take us? Honestly, it's just my childhood. And it's like all the summers and being outside, never really feeling tired.

I mean, I'm a night out just naturally. So always having the sun up or at least never truly for the night to get dark was just the way my upbringing looked like. And I think I realized how special and kind of strange it is when I started traveling a lot. And when I started to not spend my summers only in Stockholm. And where I'm from, like, it's more down south. So we don't like see the sun all night. But it never gets dark. It's like a white night, you know?

But if you go further up, a bit up north, it's like the sun never touches the horizon. It just stays there in the sky. which is very weird and beautiful. What changes in that season? Like, I imagine people's behavior must be different. Like, who are you growing up in that? No, honestly. Because also that happening in the summertime

means that it's the complete opposite in the winter. Right. So it's two polar opposites. And I think that strong difference between the seasons, I think it makes people appreciate when it's good a lot and really savor the moments of, warmth and sun and like having your five weeks of vacation, which most people do in the summer. And it's so beautiful to see where the, when the spring kind of settles in, and I've had so many

pictures of strangers on my phone, where they just stop, like in the middle of the street, and then they turn their faces towards the sun like a sunflower. And then they just have their eyes closed and they just stand there in the street, just soaking up the sun, like those first day of spring where you can kind of feel the heat of the sun, it's like you come alive. And then those two months where it's good weather, it's like nothing really, nothing else really matters. At least that's the way it is for me. And I think a lot of people, and then we just try to hold on to that just so we can get through the really, really dark and cold winters. So it's a period of a lot of celebration. I would say so. The song is very celebratory.

Yes, it's like euphoric, you know. It's about kind of being great. grateful for life also. And I've wanted to write a song called Midnight Sun for so long. And now when I'm 27, I feel like I'm allowed to be nostalgic of my childhood and like my upbringing and just the way I think is shaped how I write music. Because also when the summer is happening and is present, I don't really want to do much. I just want to try to have a good time. But then also in the winter when it's really dark and cold, I think that's when people get into the studios and work a lot because you don't want to be outside. Studios don't have a lot of windows anyway.

Exactly. Exactly. So obviously there's the title. Were there any other lyrics that served as a North Star for your love of Swedish summer? On this song? Yeah. I mean, the whole song is about my perfect day at my summer house,

like 40 minutes outside of Stockholm. So I just walk around, no shoes. I'm touching the grass. I want to sit on my, what's it called when it's like, that wooden thing out in the water. Not a bridge. A dock? A dock, yeah. Thanks.

I want to sit on the dock. I want to just jump in the water, naked, feel the wind in my hair. It's like a love letter to nature. That's very pastoral. Yeah. For sort of like, also like dance club song. I know. It really is.

It's like, to me, what life is about. And I grow older and the more I get to experience, the more cool things I get to see, the more I feel like life is truly about those small moments with my friends and my family. I didn't grow up in the countryside, but now I'm like, oh my God, I love the forest. I love the sun. I love the clouds. Like, that shit makes me cry sometimes. I think we can hear that in the vocal performance. It's very wistful.

Yeah. There's a sort of airy quality to it. Yeah. Are there other ways you feel like the production? contributes to this atmosphere that puts you in that place back at home in that midnight sun. It's an interesting production

because it is such a beautiful song and I feel like it's a very different vibe. I'm a person who loves a good production. Like, I love dance. I love a beat. And this one has this like Jersey club beat which is quite unexpected. Your heart out is my favorite part now.

We ain't got to tell. I wouldn't really expect it in the drop when it comes in in the chorus. Yeah. But I feel like it just elevates it to be even more fun in a way. Sure. I think the whole album for me is fun and not silly, but it's not too serious. And it's just about, like, having a good time. I think I couldn't have done this song without Higlian Nagau,

who's my collaborator on this album and Margo Excess, who produced it, and I'm in E.K. And we all kind of came together and just, like, brought our own. versions of summer into this. Helena's from Denmark, so she's Scandinavian and kind of knows the vibes. And then Uzo is more like R&B dance, London, Margo, done a lot in Montreal, done a lot in Chicago. And I feel like just that whole team coming together made it what it was. Because it doesn't feel, the production doesn't feel super Swedish.

So interesting. I think. Yeah. It feels quite global, I guess. I guess. It's like a mix. You have so many things. Obviously, we have the Jersey Club beat and the drop that we heard. But there's also sort of trancy synth stabs that open the song.

There's nods to drum and bass in the verse. Absolutely. It is a really fun mix. It's very dream state-ish. Yeah. Almost like we've dreamed five different dance genres that are coming together. And a lot of songs on the album are very much that. And I feel like it represents me very well too because I love so many different things.

I think it's beautiful pop, and Swedish musicians and producers and writers, they do that very well. But I also wanted something that wasn't super expected. The patterns of the drum beats, it's like a little unexpected. And I don't think I could have done this with the people I worked with previously. And Midnight Sun is a good representation of all these amazing things coming together to still feel really authentically me. I hear that. I mean, I really hear all those various collaborations. certainly the grittiness of the drums.

It feels sort of London dance music I hear. The bass, talk about unexpected. It kind of like, boom. And you're like, where to go? It's coming back? Yeah. And then, you know, it's kind of like dancing around. Totally.

It's kind of, it's building all the suspense. Yeah. The first time we hear the chorus, it's just basically you. Like, not much is happening. No. Skinny pepper with your heart out is my favorite part now. We ain't got a town. And it's more of a sort of like post-chorus drop kind of song where it all has

great sort of dance moment where we finally get a real beat. It's a great payoff after this bass drum that's like kind of dancing around in an unexpected ways. Yeah. Yeah. It's very satisfying. Yeah. I want to get into the Swedishness of it all then. I'd love to know a little bit about how language shapes your choices. Now you're working with collaborators from across the world.

I imagine your shared language probably is English. Absolutely. What about for you? How does singing and thinking between some... Swedish and English change how you approach your writing. It's interesting because I've always wanted to sing in English. And growing up, I was such a fan of like the international, I think most specifically like American artist, Christine Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Beyonce.

I also love Celine Dion. I did watch your performance of My Heart Will Go On. Yes. You were 10 years old? Yes. It was amazing. Yeah, no, she was my first ever concert that I went to. I loved like the big voices.

And we didn't really have like a vocal, vocal diva like that. I think we had some like back in the days or jazz and stuff like that. But I just knew I always wanted to be international. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to sell out stages all over the world. I don't know if it was like I actively didn't listen to Swedish music. I think it's something that I've started doing now in my grown-up years. But I've tried to write songs in Swedish.

And it's really tricky and difficult. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because it's almost like it's too close to me. It's like it's too literal. It's too direct. And like, oh, it's very scary. It's like vulnerable in a different way. And me saying that, of course, like, I still have a closeness to that language.

But there is something about singing in Swedish that I just, I barely, I don't even like to speak to talk Swedish when I do my shows. and I have to like talk between my songs. I'm like, oh, no. How am I, like, what am I going to say? And it's my first language, like my mother tongue. I don't need to turn like therapist here. But I do hear a little bit of like your bedroom's like a special safe getaway from having to be a performer. Maybe you have to live a lot of your life in the public eye.

Yeah. Maybe he's like speaking in Swedish is also like it's a little bit too much. Like you got to reserve something for yourself. Maybe. Maybe it's the role when I'm like a pop star, you know. It's the English me. And then when I go home. and obviously I'm doing concerts in Sweden.

I'm not going to speak English between the songs. Like, that would be so crazy. But then it's like, oh, wait a minute. Like, this is me more. This is like the real me. Maybe in the future I'll do something in Swedish. But it feels so, yeah, it feels really like close and personal. In a way, that's almost a little scary.

Are there musical themes or sounds that you feel like Swedes are particularly known for? I think, well, it depends on what genre. I think we're really good at. You got like metal. We're not talking about metal here. Exactly. I was going to say, we have a lot of rock or metal. We have a lot of dance like EDM. But I would say mostly like the glossy pop.

Glossy pop, yeah. Yeah. Do you feel Swedish pop music is at the forefront of pushing new sounds, or is it more a place where sounds are perfected? Interesting question. Or is there a place where you feel like Sweden really has led the global sound of pop music? I guess it's the melodies. I think Swedish people and Swedish people.

and Swedish writers and creators have almost this sort of melancholy also in their songs. I mean, Abba's Waterloo is a metaphor of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, transferred onto a failed relationship. Right. Yeah. It performs a European. It's a heavy song for how lighthearted it is. Yeah.

And Abba has a lot of heavy songs. Even just last night, I was literally scrolling on TikTok and I was reading the lyrics as I was looking at this girl who sang Mamma Mia in a very sad, acoustic version. And I was like, ooh, this is sad. It's sad. It's like, you know, you just can't leave someone who is constantly cheating on you. And you're like, don't really love yourself enough. Gosh, right. It's such a sad song.

Why is it so upbeat? I know. It's so upbeat and, like, fun. But really, it's like, even the melodies are quite sad when you strip it back of all the instruments and that. But then I think we're good at making a sound. nice and polished. I guess everything kind of shapes the sound. And I, you know, I think Max Martin is also a great example of someone who is kind of like a chameleon. The only way that I can tell it's a Mac's song is that it's really excellent. Yes. You know, it's like, what is this song that's like so

perfectly structured? If it sounds like a hit, yeah. It's like, okay. So I guess it's some mathematics involved. There's like a code almost to it. When I hear a song and I think this sounds like, a hit, it must be Max Martin, it usually is. But he worked with so many artists. Pop is so broad, so like genres is hard to say. But what's interesting about him, too, that I feel like he's approaching music in a way that's like curious and humble. And he will go into a session and be like, tell me what's hot.

Tell me what's new. Tell me what's cool. Let me be like a student. I think he's a forever student. I think maybe that is actually kind of a Swedish thing. Because the attitude of being like, oh, I don't know anything. Oh, oh, no, don't look at me. Okay, we need to go further into this.

You know, Sweden's small. Yeah. Punches way above its weight in the global pop world. Some of that I've heard is like great music education. What is it for you? Like, how are you all so wildly, unbelievably talented for such a small country? Yeah, it's amazing. And I feel so proud to be a part of the Swedish music experience.

I don't feel pressured, but I do feel like I'm representing, like you say, a small place. Yeah, like proportionally, we export so much music and so much good music. There's so much talent. Every country has its own local talent. Totally. Great talent people. But like worldwide to get out the songs and like to make the masses of people enjoy where it's from. It's kind of crazy.

I don't know when it kind of started. Like who kind of paved the way for that? But I think it started way before I was born. Right. Certainly, ABA, Eurovision, I think is often placed as a marker. Absolutely. Caron Studios. Yes.

Max's early career. Yeah. But like the Cardigans, Rock Set. Yeah. Also with pop, like, I love Robin personally. Excuse me. How can I not invoke Robin yet? Like, there's obviously so many people before me.

And I think like every person in a way kind of, you know, when you have the, when you play curling and it like, and they scrub the ice and it just makes it glide a little bit a little bit further. I feel like a lot of people were before me doing that. Because when I say like, oh, you know, I'm Swedish and I do pop, you're taking quite seriously. And I now can look at people and be like, wow, that's so cool. And also that I'm a part of that. But growing up, it was like, where's Beyonce? It really was like that.

But now I love to listen to Swedish music. I love the production, the writing. I also think it's quite, some people say it's a quite melodic language. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Does that speak to some of, you know, people talk about the idea of like Max's melodic math? And you sort of invoke the sort of mathematics. Yeah.

Do you feel like that's something that you have deeply studied? There is obviously some sort of like math to whatever perfect song is. I know there's been books written about this as well. You know what I mean? I teach about it as well. You do? Yeah, I teach it for Berkeley in NYU. So what is it?

Do you want a couple hours? Well, I guess... Is there something that makes, like, our brains take structures of, like, melodies? I think some of the things that I observe is that Max, as they, like, stand in for a whole lot of other musicians, you have a really clear sense of each section having a melodic range with a really clear melodic rhythm. Yeah. That is in of itself catchy. Right.

and creating strong contrast between sections where you don't enter on the same note, your melodic rhythm changes. A lot of max's melodies often will, if they're steady quarter notes, they're going to go to dotted eighth notes in the next section. They're going to change their rhythm in some kind of way. And usually, obviously, obviously, we've got to get some like ascension. The melodic range is starting to build. There's a lot of like being careful not to give away your awesome note that you want to sing

in your chorus. Don't ever sing that note until you get to it. Yeah, yeah. Or a lot of what he also is. is doing is actually previewing melodies that you're going to hear later. Right. So you're getting used to them. Yeah, yeah.

It's catchy. Our love of melody is the familiarity and the novelty. Totally. So like, oops, I did it again. You literally hear Britney say, oops, I did it again in the verse. And then you get to the chorus and you're like, oh, I love that thing. I know that. Yeah.

Those are many of the, some of the things. It's interesting because me personally, like, I feel I understand all of that. Yeah. But I don't apply it in the way of doing it. It's like you say when you listen to a song, it just feels good. I'm so not trained on any sort of like instrument or music theory. I just kind of go with what feels good. It's intuitive.

Music theory is just a language of patterns that are patterns that lots of people who are amazing writers have their own way of conceiving what those patterns are that might just use their own inner language. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So that mathematics might just be something that's like, it's just in there. Sometimes, you know, I hear people say, oh, but it's so nice.

not having sometimes are right with people who don't have theory down because they sometimes choose things that aren't really mathematically correct per se but it makes it a bit more interesting. Do you know what I mean?

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think that we want to work with people who have a broad appreciation for musicality of all kinds. And oftentimes people, I think about like nirvana and smells like teen spirit. Is this like very unusual

chord progression that is not a chord progression that like I'm sure some other people had used it before but it's a really strange one right and now like jazz performers copy that song because they're like whoa that was cool so yeah i mean knowing when to use these patterns and when to break through patterns I think any musician can do whether they are trained untrained but staying too close to the rules is never yeah yeah because music is about expectations and defying those expectations so we have to know when to say like now I'm gonna throw that out and just do some wild and crazy thing And I think also that's why like writing songs, it's so fun. And that's why, I mean, I've been, I've been thinking a lot about like the future of AI and stuff. Like, let's give it 10 years, you know, because you're right. Everything is a pattern. Even if you want it to be or not, are we then going to have, I don't know, just an algorithm like writing these songs that would also probably be amazing songs in the future when they've really gotten it down. Yeah, but we need you to deliver them.

I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. I mean, it makes me go back to what you were talking about in terms of some of the sort of themes that we're hearing in Swedish music. You imagine Mamma Mia. An incredibly melancholic song. Yeah. Within this like over.

Yeah, so fun. Overwhelming joy at the same time. Yes. It almost makes you think of the Swedish seasons that you described at the beginning. That's why I think we have like melancholy or that really strong tension. You get through the winter, your melancholy. You get through the summer. Yeah.

You integrate them into music. I think that's a lot of what we're capturing here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Zara, thank you so much for joining us.

Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. So how's it going with those shrimp sandwiches, Nate? I'm about to enter a giant food coma, Charlie. Enjoyable? I feel like I'm on the Stockholm canals staring up at the midnight sun, picking bits of mayonnaise out of my teeth. It's beautiful. The sounds of Zara Larson swimming through my ears.

Switched on Pop is pretty. by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Lissa Soap, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Arras Gottlieb. Our theme music is by Zach Tenario and Jossi Adams of Arc Iris. Remember the Vox Media Podcast Network or production of Vulture.

Support of New York Magazine, you can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. Hit us up on social media at Switchdown Pop. Sing to us of your favorite Swedish songwriters, producers, singers. And if you are Swedish, if you've been to Sweden,

tell us, give us some insights. are we missing about the great Swedish invasion of pop music in the 21st century? We'll be back next week. And we're talking Doja, right, Charles? Well, not just Doja. Janet. Janet. Dona Cat does Janet. Ms. Jackson has been so much fun. We'll see you next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening.