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There's no single explanation for how Swedish songwriters and producers keep turning out hits. For Ola Hakansson, who started his career in the 1960s with Ola and the Janglers--the first Swedish band to hit the U.S. Billboard charts--it comes down to a kind of ingrained adaptability. "We're a small country, so we can't set any trends," says Hakansson, who now manages Icona Pop. "But we're really good at picking up on other people's, and we're really good at mimicking." Musically, he notes, American pop is rooted in jazz and blues, while European music is based more firmly on keyboards. "What we do in Sweden is to mix the jazz and blues with the keyboards," he says. "If you listen to Abba, that's what they did. Groups today are still at it."
Others point to an older influence. "You hear that?" Carlsson asks, playing the unmistakable opening notes of Abba's "Dum Dum Diddle." "That's a hook you'll never hear anywhere else. That's straight from Swedish folk music, which is very melodic."
Another potent explanation for Sweden's pop juggernaut comes from that most indigenously Scandinavian of things: the welfare state. Publicly funded arts councils give money to artists, venues and labels for recording, touring and even living expenses. The nurturing of musical talent begins even earlier. Children take mandatory music-appreciation classes in kindergarten, and cities run kulturskolan, which offer low-fee after-school programs for children that include music lessons and instrument rentals.
Earlier this year, Sweden opened its own music Hall of Fame, which includes an Abba museum. But the future of the burgeoning pop industry may lie in the newly created Academy of Music and Business. Founded by Carlsson and his former music teacher, Magnus Lundin, in their hometown of Tingsryd, the school opened Aug. 24. As a gymnasium--a kind of advanced high school--it receives €13,000 annually from the Swedish government for each of its 46 current students. (It expects to have 240 within three years.) "We're standing in front of enormous changes in the music industry, and the industry itself doesn't know how to prepare musicians," says Lundin. "That's where we come in."
The school is also a step toward institutionalizing the phenomenon that began spontaneously in Cheiron Studios two decades ago. On the day that Jonah Nilsson visited AMB, Carlsson came with him and delivered a lecture about the songwriting process. For Linn Jans, his talk was just as inspiring as Nilsson's performance. "Sweden is so little and America is so big," she said afterward. "I really want to be famous in America."
--With reporting by Carl Reinholdtzon Belfrage