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Jonah Nilsson seeks that same kind of breakthrough. A literal choirboy--his first music gig was at his church--he formed a band in 2009 with school buddies. But unlike the front men of most boy bands, Nilsson had a keen interest in understanding how songs work--and the talent to make them his own. So much talent that when the band, christened Dirty Loops, posted a YouTube video of themselves playing a jazz-inflected version of Lady Gaga's "Just Dance," the response was what counts as overwhelming in Sweden: 5,000 hits within the first few days. "I have YouTube to thank for everything," Nilsson says. "Until then, we were just typical teenagers who wanted to be left alone in the basement."
The YouTube splash brought a call from superstar producer and songwriter Andreas Carlsson, who co-wrote "Bye Bye Bye" for 'N Sync. Carlsson flew the group to Los Angeles, where Nilsson impressed Quincy Jones and producer David Foster. Carlsson told Foster, "It's going to be sweaty for Timberlake after this kid comes out."
Now views of some of Dirty Loops' covers have topped 3 million, and Nilsson is preparing for what's to come. "I want to do it all--go out on tour, play the big arenas, produce, maybe write music for movies," he says. "And once I've done all that, I'd like to go back and write choir music."
That's the charming thing about Swedes: even their pop stars' ambitions never seem obvious or insatiable. That ingrained aversion to standing out (in Swedish, it's called jantelagen) may explain why the most influential Swedes in pop music--and they are legion--are hardly household names. But behind the scenes, Shellback, RedOne, Bloodshy and Avant, and the great Max Martin are responsible for a disproportionately large number of pop hits from the past decade or so. Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, 'N Sync, Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Pink, Katy Perry, Maroon 5: every single one of them has had a hit--more often quite a few--written and produced by Swedes.
The man credited with starting this trend is Dag Volle, a.k.a. Denniz Pop. He discovered Ace of Base in the early '90s, when the band's demo cassette got stuck in his car stereo. After being forced to listen to the same song over and over, he realized he couldn't get it out of his head. (He would retitle it "All That She Wants.") He and a partner later opened Cheiron Studios and got their big break when a group of five young Americans walked in to record their first album and walked out as the Backstreet Boys.
Until his death in 1998, Volle worked collaboratively, bringing in young songwriters and mentoring them. It was he who recognized Max Martin, perhaps the most talented--and still the most prolific--of Nordic music men. Martin (real name: Martin Karl Sandberg) has since written an astonishing string of hits, including Spears' "Baby One More Time," Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" and Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love." He was involved in 7 of the 10 most performed pop songs in 2012. His latest masterwork, Perry's "Roar," which he co-wrote and produced, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.