SHORT
The Magnettes hail from Pajala, Sweden, and have toured in 20 countries including performances at SXSW, Summerfest, Euro Pride, Golden Melody Awards, Eurosonic, and The Great Escape.
Their debut album ”Ugly Youth” dropped in 2017 and featured the singles ”Sad Girls Club”, featured on Netflix’s ”Elite”, and ”Young And Wild”, and one of the top-ten most played Swedish tracks on national radio that year. “Pajala State of Mind” has been used in countless programs on Swedish television. The band toured Europe, North America, and Asia with the album 2018, and 2019.
Album number two was starting to progress in 2020 when Covid hit. The band went into the studio during the Covid years and developed their sound. Two singles were released during these years. “Shakes” and ”American”. Both were in radio rotation on many big international stations over Europe and Canada. 2022 The band was picked up by K51 and released the single “Monster” at the end of the pandemic. At the same time, the full movie documentary “The Magnettes” was released with great reviews.
During 2022 The Magnettes was back in full swing. They got the dream booking to play at Glastonbury Festival and 9 other festivals during the summer. At the end of the year, they took a leap forward when K51 started a collaboration with Warner where the new double A-side single “Karma Baby / Costa Rica” was released in November.
LONG
The Magnettes – A Biography
‘Say what you want to say. Do it as loud as you want. Be weird, be ugly, be too much, fuck as much as you want and question everything’.
– The Magnettes’ Manifesto
Pop music is one of Sweden’s major cultural exports and over the years it has given us a wide diversity of talented artists such as Robyn, ABBA, The Knife Lykke Li, Icona Pop, The Cardigans, Swedish House Mafia and Zara Larsson. Ten hours from the hit-making hub of Stockholm, above the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn’t rise during winter, lies the sleepy town of Pajala, home to 2000 residents…and The Magnettes, a fearless 21st Century fuck-pop trio who think ugly and weird is cool and that the patriarchy needs to be crushed. Right now.
This remote region has a minority language called Meänkieli, a language that was forbidden in Sweden until 1957 and today only spoken around 50 000 people. The Magnettes celebrate their roots and incorporate Meänkieli and the area’s old folk music into their infectious and inimitable glitter punk-pop. The band is Rebecka Digervall, Sanna Kalla and Tomas Backlund who’s mission is the right to be as you want to be.
The Magnettes’ founders and co-vocalists Rebecka and Sanna describe themselves as ‘non-normative’, ‘witches’, ‘Tornedalingar’ (which translates as natives of the Torne Valley, a Swedish minority) and ‘Sisters of the Ugly Youth’ and this subversion is evident in their spellbinding songs. “We’re reclaiming the word ‘ugly’” declares Sanna “Why does beautiful have to be the standard? We have no regrets. We’re saying exactly what we want to say”.
“There’s some sort of Northern rebellion” adds guitarist, keyboardist, and producer Tomas Backlund. “We don’t want to be your average singing self-obsessed diary entries. We aim to do something bigger but we want to do it without moving to Stockholm, London or LA and writing songs about beaches and being super fit because what’s interesting about that?”
The seeds of rebellion were planted when Rebecka and Sanna met at school aged six-years-old. By 14, Rebecka had written a plethora of songs for the duo. In 2012, they released their first official song “Paper Cut” and performed a series of shows across Europe and Russia. By 2014 Tomas joined and the duo became a trio.
In 2014 The Magnettes went to the States for the first time to perform at the New Music Seminar in New York. In the same year back in Sweden they were the main subjects of Hans-Erik Therus’s documentary ”Pajala State Of Mind”, which featured in the Gothenburg Film Festival, the Tempo Documentary Festival in Stockholm and on Swedish national television. The director was so fascinated by the band that he’s embarked on a fly on the wall sequel with the band, documenting where they’re at three years later.
In the spring of 2015 the group headed back to the States to perform a string of head turning shows at SXSW, followed by a trip to Nashville for a pivotal songwriting session. “Something happened in Nashville,” says Rebecka.“we were just like, ‘Yeah it’s time to be fearless and write whatever the fuck we want.’ So we did!” Energized by the trip the band began recording in Tomas’s kitchen, carving out a middle ground between their main influences, including Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Bikini Kill and Katy Perry.
The band’s shows at SXSW led to a booking at The Alternative Escape in Brighton the following month, followed by a series of summer shows and festivals across Europe. In the autumn they returned to the States for a US tour including New York, where they played CMJ and signed a record deal with Nashville based label DigSin.
Since then they’ve barely paused for breath. They’ve released four critically acclaimed singles (‘Bones’, ‘Killers in a Ghost Town’, ‘Hollywood’ and ‘Sad Girls Club’, which received support from Spotify and key bloggers including Perez Hilton), toured incessantly and written their debut album ‘Ugly Youth’, that was released on 30th June 2017. The song Young and Wild got A-rotation on Swedish national radio over the summer of 2017 and in the end became the 10th most played song on Swedish radio 2017. They also were nominated one of 20 emerging acts on the worlds biggest festival Summerfest in Milwaukee in the USA. Their lives were followed on Swedish Television in the TV program ”Min Squad” for over ten episodes.
The Magnettes describe the themes of the album as being “mainly about adolescence and identity, coming to terms with who you are and finding your place in the world. It’s also about friends, fucking, fighting, and drinking. One pretty central theme for the album was the idea of an alternate universe where the tables were turned, the freaks had taken over, the goths were cheerleaders and cool kids, and were being weird was just normal.” And there you’d find plenty of Magnettes fans… who the band says ‘like things that are kind of leftfield yet straightforward and tend to get into a lot of heated arguments about, for instance, social issues and gender norms. They could be punks or indie-fans, but could just as well be into hip-hop or mainstream shiny pop. For us, it’s pretty much the same, because when it’s good it’s simple, like a splash of red on something black-and-white, or a punch to the face.”
The following up album to ”Ugly Youth” has taken twist and turns. The Magnettes keept on touring and was opening both for Ke$ha and Red Hot Chili Peppers and played on Golden Melody Festival and walked the red carpet on Golden Melody Awards in front of 5,1 billion viewers in Asia. Their song ”Sad Girls Club” was placed on the Netflix series ”Elite”. Even a fiction movie about their lives and with their music was released ”Turpa kiinni minun haters” translated ”Shut Up Haters”. A documentary film team consisting of Martin Åhlin and Frida Bäcklund Thuneström followed them for two years what should become a documentary around their career named ”The Magnettes.
Then disaster struck. All touring and pressure got the members mentally ill and they had to step on the brakes. All were filmed by the documentary team. Then Jay Frank the owner of Digsin died of cancer a couple of months later and the record label was shut down. When all the rights had been cleared Covid -19 hit’s and puts everything at a standstill.
The documentary ”The Magnettes” had premiered in February 2020.
The single ”American” was released during Covid in June 2020 and got rotation in over 15 countries around the globe and was on Swedish national radio on rotation for several months.
23 of March 2021 The Magnettes released the specially written song ”We Make It Look Easy” as a tribute to their favorite hockey team Luleå Hockey. 27 of August same year they released ”Tangerine Skies” as the official Luleå Pride song. Weeks later was it revealed that they signed a new deal with the new record label K51 in Sweden.
Quotes about The Magnettes
Perez Hilton – The Swedish duo is very reminiscent of fellow Swedish duo Icona Pop, whom we love.
The 405 – ’Killers In A Ghost Town,’ is a black-hearted love song and call to arms for every bored teenage girl who’s outgrown her small town’s offerings.
Drowned in sound – Swedish pop sensations The Magnettes, whose fast paced electro pop owes as much to Abba and Roxette as it does leftfield artists Ladytron or Surfer Rosa.
SXSW Music Bloggers Guide – We like to think of The Magnettes as “Icona Pop for the deep thinkers”. If Josie and The Pussycats are Riverdale’s answer to hometown music heroes, then think of The Magnettes being Westerburg High School’s pin-up girls with the Heathers as their biggest fans.
EQ Music – Having seen them live now for the first time, it’s cemented my belief that The Magnettes could be the next big thing in pop.
Beehive Candy – The pop hooks grab you, whilst the punk overtones give the song some real edge.
Pop Dust – The Magnettes Are ’Killers In A Ghost Town’ & Will Take Over The World
Galore Magazine – The Magnettes prefer to be more accurately described as “21st Century Fuck-Pop,” a genre we are more than willing to be down with.
Blooper Magazine – This is conceptually the most interesting pop act to emerge recently
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