Lisa Ekdahl: How it all started

My passion for Swedish music started in 1994 with Lisa Ekdahl. I was a senior in high school, an exchange student in Northern Sweden trying to escape the drama American high school. I had been invited to the weekly family dinner with my classmate. Niklas, a year older than me, baked an apple pie–in case I was homesick–in a sauce pan, so the sides were perpendicular to the bottom. He put on a CD he’d bought earlier in the week: Lisa Ekdahl’s eponymous debut album.

I spoke hardly any Swedish when I bought my own copy, just enough to explain I didn’t: Jag talar bara lite svenska. I listened to the album over and over during my year there. Six months later I suddenly realized I understood the gist of the lyrics. Nine months later, I could sing along to all the songs. The album was a smashing success, going quadruple platinum in Sweden. My Swedish was a success, with vocabulary, syntax and verb conjugations reinforced by memorizing lyrics.

The biggest hit of the album was Vem vet, a song about the fate of meeting someone:

 

Lisa has gone on to record 10 albums–four in English–and win three Swedish Grammy awards.

I went on to undergraduate and graduate studies in Swedish language and literature at the University of Washington, and to teach advanced Swedish courses at the Swedish Cultural Center, where I used Lisa’s music in my lessons.

Sweden has gone on to gain the reputation as the third largest exporter of music in the world, after the US and the UK.