Interviews

Those Dancing Days

Rhian Daly 26/12/2008

Swedish pop starlets Those Dancing Days have been rollercoaster journey since their inception back in 2005, including MTV Awards nominations, travelling the world and reimagining Britney Spears' hits. GIITTV met up with the five affable musicians at Goldsmiths SU to run through their pop career thus far…

Do you want to just give me a really brief history of Those Dancing Days?

Cissi: Me and Rebecka were childhood friends. Also, Rebecka and Lisa were friends when they were small. We had a band earlier but we broke up and we wanted to start something new. I knew Mimmi who played the bass so we asked here if she wanted to join. Linnea was a friend of Mimmi because they were in the same class, so we asked her if she wanted to play in the band.

Everything started happening quite fast for you guys, in terms of people talking and writing about your music. Did you find it overwhelming how quickly everything happened?

Mimmi: Yes, it was very weird, we were very surprised.

Lisa: We were making songs and music, and we tried to record a demo before but it always screwed up but then we did one with our sound engineer. We put it up on myspace and then things started to roll on.

You got nominated for an MTV Europe Music Award last year…

All: Yeah!
Mimmi: We were thinking about that a couple of days ago and we were like “That's really weird!”

Linnea: It was a vote for 20 different Swedish bands and then the 5 with the most votes got elected in and we were one of them.

Rebecka: We only had like on song out.

Mimmi: The other bands were all really established bands so we were like “What?!” It was really fun… could you vote like a lot of times? Ok, my mum was sitting there pressing Vote.

Did you get to go to the awards ceremony?

Mimmi: No, it was only the top three and we weren't in the top 3. We were still on the “and nominated for the Swedish…” so we were still mentioned.

So, your songs are all in English. Why did you choose not to write them in Swedish?

Rebecka: I think it's a way to get the whole world; otherwise you're stuck in small Sweden. That could be fun but I think it's more adventure [sic] to reach out for the whole world. But it's also more natural to write in English because all the music you listen to is English lyrics.

Linnea: It's very hard to make a living of music just in Sweden and that's what we wanted to do. I mean, somewhere in the back of our heads we knew that was what we wanted to do so we started singing in English. I think you have to be very brave to sing in Swedish because it's so out there and it gets so much more personal, in a way.

Mimmi: There's only a couple of Swedish artists who have sung in Swedish. It's not a very done thing.

Linnea: It gets cheesy very easily.

Rebecka: I think you can hide a bit in English because maybe you're not handling it very much, but you can understand it to write.

Linnea: Yeah, you can play more with the words.

Rebecka: Yeah! It's not your main language so you can have more fun with it.

Mimmi: Swedish is not a very exciting language, like Icelandic, like maybe Sigur Ros it's more fun for them to sing in a really weird language that they have. Icelandic is more mysterious and Lord of the Rings like - Swedish is not mysterious at all.

Were you pleased with the reaction to 'In Our Space Hero Suits'?

Linnea: Outside Sweden we are.

Lisa: It's been both good and bad in Sweden. It's been ok overall. I think we got a better response from the UK.

Linnea: Yeah, cos we were away in London instead of in Sweden so we weren't active in Sweden for a very long time, so we disappeared and then they thought the album was coming too late.

Lisa: But in secret, we were playing the UK…

Mimmi: And that was a lot more fun, I think!
Lisa: Yes, a lot more fun!

So you prefer playing over here rather than in Sweden then?

Lisa: Yeah, but we do like to play Sweden. We do like the UK a lot though.

I heard your Britney Spears cover, why did you choose to do that?

Lisa: We had to do a cover of a song for a radio show in Sweden and then we all think it's a very good song…

Cissi: But it's not one of our favourites though…

Lisa: No, maybe not but I think we thought it would be a good song to do a cover of because we would do it a bit different from her cos if we were to do a cover of a song we really love then, well, it can't get better than the original.

Linnea: It's fun too, to play pop music. Like Britney Spears is one pop and we are another pop so it's fun to make a pop song another pop song.

Mimmi: I think that we thought that our version was more far from the original than it actually was because when I actually listened to it I was like “Yeah, it's not that far from it”.

You're on your UK tour in fact it started last night, how did it go?

Linnea: Yeah, in Bristol.

Rebecka: We arrived 30 minutes before the gig so no sound check, no line check, no nothing.

Lisa: We had been going on a boat between Sweden and Finland and then fly to London then go by car, so we were a bit tired from travelling but I think it was fun, it was a good audience.

What are you doing for this year, after the tour?

Cissi: We go home to Sweden and write new songs…

Lisa: Jam together, have good times and we're going to play in Copenhagen, Paris and Madrid.