



Earlier this year, before this pandemic, I spent my 39th birthday at the Swedish Grammy Awards. Despite having been nominated a few times since 2004 I’ve never set my foot there. But my therapist thought it’d be a good idea, she said that even if it is a ”horrible industry circle jerk” (my words) I need to take my profession seriously and go network. And Annika, who I was nominated with for our project Correspondence, said she usually had a fun time there. ”You just get drunk and then all of a sudden you're hanging out with Per Gessle from Roxette”. It’s weird that we were nominated. For Correspondence, this obscure project that was barely even an album, just a website that we continuously uploaded songs to. And since the other nominees were much bigger artists than us I relaxed and thought of this as a field trip. There wasn’t a risk that we would win anyway. I didn’t prepare any speech.



We started at a preparty at Sony Music’s headquarter where Annika’s label, the very sweet people at Razzia, also have their office. I immediately started talking to a nice guy in a leather jacket who turned out to be the drummer in a very successful band in Sweden, one that’s been selling out arenas for decades. After the band had thrown in the towel a few years ago, he had gone back to working in a prison, like he did before he joined the band. He talked about people he worked with, sometimes heavy criminals, murderers, and how they sometimes figured out who he was and confessed that they were fans. It was humbling to hear him tell this story, to hear him say that he chose this over continuing to struggle in the music business. But it also surprised me, that someone who had played in one of the most successful bands ever, thought that continuing in music was a struggle.



We got in a bus to go to the awards. I thought about how much things have changed since I watched it on TV as a teenager. I remember the band Popsicle in the 90’s saying in their speech that they wished the band Arvingarna would die in a bus accident. And that was because they simply disliked their music. No one gets upset over music these days. We might get upset over something an artist has said or done in an interview or in their personal life. But music itself seems to have become as explosive as a wet firecracker. I look up and realize that Arvingarna are seated two seats ahead of me. And we’re on a bus.



At arrival, the dreaded red carpet looms ahead. I’ve never been on a red carpet. I stand in line to face the horror when Annika taps me on the shoulder and says ”do you actually want to go there?” while she nods towards the actual entrance where mountains of champagne and zero photographers await us. The red carpet turns out to be optional. I’m at drink # 4 when we reach our table which is filled to the brim with bottles. At the back of the seats are the names of the people we’re seated with. Fricky and Cleo, two mellow rappers from the north, Sophie Zelmani, a popular singer who’s been in the biz for decades and folk singer Sofia Karlsson. They’re all super nice. On the chair next to mine it says Daniel Ek. I feel my pulse get quicker and my fist clenches instinctively to a fork. But it’s not the CEO of Spotify, just one of Sofia Karlsson's collaborators. A common name in Sweden.



As the show starts I think back on when I was nominated the first time, in 2004. I was nominated in three categories and it took me by surprise because I hadn’t realized my record label had sent in my album. The artist Mattias Alkberg was equally surprised and boycotted the award that year after finding out his label had applied without telling him. He felt that the awards represented an imperialistic industry and that he was used as an alibi. For a brief moment the importance of the Grammy Awards was questioned and in hindsight I kinda regret not boycotting it too because I was at a point then where I actually could’ve made a tiny impact. It bothers me how much this award is used to bolster an artists importance in media, both domestically and internationally, since it’s almost always the same mainstream major label artists who win. But I felt like I didn’t know all the facts and I would just look dumb. I still feel like that. As I’m writing down my thoughts here I realise how complicated all this is. Because by questioning it you’re questioning all the other artists who are involved. And you risk sounding like a snob, like someone who can afford to not whore yourself out. The whoring out has become a sign of authenticity these days.



Back then things were so different, it felt like anything was possible. The major labels were on their knees. The Swedish torrent index The Pirate Bay were openly mocking any lawyer who threatened them by suggesting various objects they could insert into their rectums. The internet with all it’s possibilities and freedom was set to change everything and create a wonderful anarchic universe. I didn’t care if people downloaded my music for free, I was just happy to be part of this future where everything was available and allowed. And slowly it started to seem ridiculous that music should cost anything at all. Then things escalated quickly. The MPAA and RIAA threatened the Swedish government with sanctions who in turn brought The Pirate Bay into court. And in the meantime tech and energy drink companies saw their chance and offered a much too simple answer to a very complex question. In a way I feel responsible for creating the monster we live with now. Free was never the answer.



Things have changed in many ways since then. I think of Annika’s song 'Dian Fossey' where she sings about going to the Grammy's, how she felt like Dian Fossey, the famous primatologist who studied gorillas by becoming one of their flock. She sings ”Drunk girls won prizes, ten years ago it was drunk guys”. There’s definitely more diversity now. Someone even mentions this in his speech and everyone applauds. The diversity at the awards is uplifting but within this room, within this context, when everything’s for sale, it feels a bit like a wrinkled, deflated balloon. It’s like we’ve been fighting for equal rights to be screwed over by Spotify.



Time rolls by so slowly. This is a lot more boring than I thought it’d be. And I’m surprised at how everyone else around me also seem bored. When there’s half left and we’ve already lost in our category, I start checking my emails on my phone. I look around me and see I’m not the only one. The camera crews move over to other tables at the front where there’s more industry people who are still in a good mood. During a break a guy comes out and tells the crowd to please clap more when the nominees are presented and reminds us that if our speeches are too long we will be interrupted by ’Je T’aime Moi Non Plus’ played loud over the speakers, drowning out our words and then we’ll be escorted off stage.



When one of the bigwigs from Spotify comes out on stage I think: We're in The Hunger Games! Every time something has threatened the status quo we’ve been made to feel like our colleagues or fans are the enemies: The fans are downloading our music illegally! Our colleagues are badmouthing us for trying to make a living! When a debate about Red Bull’s influence over the music scene lit up a few years ago, in the light of their CEO’s support of Trump and anti immigration politics, we were made to feel like we were shaming each other when the criticism really was aimed at those who capitalize on our art. The music industry very much resembles the world at large in this sense and the way workers are turned against each other rather than against the people in power. The Spotify top shot is right there. We could pick up our beetroot tartar that we’ve been served and throw it at him. And yet we continue this meaningless battle between our respective districts.



There’s a brilliant BBC documentary by Jeremy Deller called ’Everybody In The Place’ which documents the UK acid house culture in the late 80’s / early 90’s and how that scene reflected the changing society. One part of this documentary that spoke to me was about how the ravers ditched not only major labels and distributors but also conventional venues and found their own spaces (woods, fields etc), even bringing their own sound systems. Essentially they took over the entire means of production. It made me think about how liberating and exciting it was, when I started making music, to find a direct channel between my song and the listener's ear. Having my own studio - my dad’s old PC, my own platform - my website, selling my own records and distributing my own mp3’s. It felt meaningful. Jeremy brings up Marx’s thoughts on alienation, that originally concerned factory workers and how making things they had no connection with made them alienated from their work and ultimately from society and other human beings. Everyone now has the possibility to record music and release it, but in order to reach out and make money from it you need to pay a toll to Spotify, our almighty gatekeeper. Or ask for money from Red Bull, our rich racist uncle. We make ”content”, for corporations so they can sell ads or fizzy battery acid drinks to teenagers. That’s where the alienation comes from. That’s why music feels like a wet firecracker right now. Ironically, when I look up ’Everybody In The Place’ to quote it, I find that it’s now presented by Gucci.



It’s hard to see a way out of this, it makes me think of what the late Mark Fisher called ’capitalist realism’. We’ve lost the ability to imagine something different. Spotify and the other streaming giants with their near monopoly make it seem impossible. How can anything compete with a service that offers EVERYTHING for the cost of two cappuccinos? Now that we have this, why would anyone want anything different? What would that even be?



Maybe we simply need to make music completely worthless. To the point that even venture capitalists and corporations lose interest and leave the sinking ship. A sort of "scorched earth policy" for music distribution, like the Russians throughout history burned down their own villages to prevent the invading enemy from using their resources. Note that I'm not saying free here, music has essentially been free for over a decade. I'm saying worthless. Something you can't even give away. And then we could start over. Maybe then we could make an artist owned streaming service. Or make music part of our cultural commons, like a public library. Either way, once we've destroyed and resurrected music we need to start paying for it one way or another. That's how music stops being "content". That's how we, ourselves, stop being "content".



At the end of the night me and Annika went to the afterparty but I turned around in the door. I was tired and I just wanted to go buy some chips and eat them in my hotel bed. But before I went I confessed to Annika that I did have a short short speech, just in case there would be a glitch in the machinery and we’d win. This is what I would’ve said:

Thank you Annika for making this strange album with me on our own premises, on our own platform.

Thank you for staying true with me.

May the odds be ever in our favour.









