Lambretta

Lambretta emerged as a Swedish pop/rock outfit that notched several European successes between the late 1990s and early 2000s. The group originated in Skaraborg during 1993 when Anders Eliasson on guitar, Petter Lantz on bass, and Tomas Persic on drums first assembled as a trio. Linda Sundblad, the vocalist with whom they became most closely identified, arrived years afterward to assume lead duties from Eliasson; her record-store-owner father had put forward her name for the role. Breakfast, the band’s 1999 debut album, yielded the buoyant radio success “Blow My Fuses,” whose accompanying clip earned a Swedish Grammy. Although Lambretta had previously written all their own songs, the self-titled follow-up incorporated several tracks supplied by the noted hitmaker Max Martin, among them “Creep” and “Bimbo.” The latter track achieved their greatest chart impact, lodging eight weeks inside the Swedish Top Ten. Compared with the debut, these numbers and the album overall adopted a noticeably heavier, metal-inflected tone that anticipated the harder-edged direction Max Martin would later pursue on productions for Kelly Clarkson (“Since You Been Gone”), the Veronicas, and Marion Raven. The Fight, issued in 2004, represented the band’s most forceful and aggressive recording to date; despite Max Martin’s renewed contributions to multiple cuts, including the single “Kill Me,” commercial results proved more modest, and the set marked their final release. Following the 2005 dissolution, Petter Lantz and Marcus Nowak—who had taken over drums from Persic on the last album—launched Psych Onation alongside vocalist Vilaivon Hagman, while Sundblad began a promising solo trajectory with the ’80s-flavored dance-pop album Oh My God.