Magnus Carlsson

Magnus Carlsson launched a successful solo career as a Swedish pop vocalist in the years following 2000. Earlier he had performed with the dansband Barbados and briefly appeared as a member of the Euro-dance outfit Alcazar. Born Lars Magnus Carlsson on June 24, 1974, in Borås, Sweden, he pursued music studies at Gothenburg University before entering the Gothenburg-based dansband Barbados in 1992. That group issued its self-titled debut album in 1994 yet achieved wider recognition only in 2000, when the track “Se Mig” placed second at Melodifestivalen and the 1999 release Rosalita climbed to number six on the Swedish albums chart. Barbados earned another second-place finish at the 2001 Melodifestivalen with “Allt Som Jag Ser” and placed two subsequent albums, Kom Hem (2000) and Världen Utanför (2002), inside the national Top Five.

At the close of 2002 Carlsson departed Barbados to join Alcazar alongside his then-boyfriend, Andreas Lundstedt. The ensemble’s Alcazarized (2003) album reached number two in Sweden and generated the number-one single “Not a Sinner Nor a Saint,” the Top Five entry “This Is the World We Live In,” and additional hits. During the same period Carlsson issued his first solo album, Allt Är Bara Du, Du, Du, in 2001 and followed it later that year with the holiday collection En Ny Jul. His third solo set, Ett Kungarike för en Kram (2003), appeared several months after Alcazarized and also entered the Top Five.

Carlsson attained his greatest commercial peak in 2006 by advancing to the Melodifestivalen finals with the number-one smash “Lev Livet!” Subsequent singles “Mellan Vitt Och Svart” and “Wrap Myself in Paper” both peaked at number two, while the albums Magnus Carlsson and Spår i Snön charted at number five and number ten, respectively. In following years he maintained strong chart presence with Top Five singles including “Live Forever,” “Crazy Summer Nights,” and “This Is Disco.” The 2008 double-disc anthology Re:collection 93-08, which gathered material from his solo work as well as his tenures with Barbados and Alcazar, likewise became a major success.