Dansband

The terms dansband and dansbandsmusik were coined around 1970, when Swedish popular music developed a signature style.

The genre developed primarily in Sweden, but has spread to neighbouring countries Norway, Denmark and the Swedish-speaking regions of Finland.

A dansband often travels by bus, performing several times every week year-round, outdoors in the summertime and indoors in the wintertime.

Romantic dansband lyrics are reminiscent of pop, where the singer declares his or her love for the person being sung to, but are often more focused on growing old together and living together until one of them dies.

For many years, the same persons wrote songs for most of the major names, but soon dansband musicians became more involved in songwriting.

Many Swedish dansbands of the time were known as pop groups during the 1960s, a gestation period shared with the showband scene in Ireland, which had many similarities with its Nordic counterpart, especially in the influences referenced in creating a homegrown music scene such as jazz, American and British pop music, swing, and country.

The golden era of dansband music was the 1970s, with bands like Thorleifs, Flamingokvintetten, Ingmar Nordströms, Wizex and Matz Bladhs.

Performances often took place on boats and at town hotels, with male members appearing in a suit, which for many years would become a dansband stereotype.

Vikingarna was one of the more popular dansbands in Sweden before being disbanded in 2004, but during the late 1990s and early 2000s (decade), they also toured (Germany) and recorded albums in German.

After a substantial decrease in the broadcasting of dansband music on radio and television in Sweden during the early 2000s (decade), despite their continuing popularity with the wider public, the dansbands declared that they were being discriminated against in August 2007, since Sveriges Radio plays many different genres of music, especially if the songs are written or performed by Swedes.

When the rules were changed in January 2003 to allow songs in languages other than Swedish, dansband music started to decline and was replaced with conventional pop and rock.

Kikki Danielsson broke through with Wizex in the 1970s.
From the late 1970s until the late 1980s, disco music and nightclubs became a major competitor to dansbands in Sweden.
Lotta Engberg scored major dansband successes in Sweden during the rebirth of the genre between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, at first with the band of her former husband and later with her own band .