Ace of Base

The Swedish quartet whose first album became one of the best-selling debuts ever made. Jenny and Linn Berggren sang in Gothenburg church choirs while their brother Jonas wrote songs on synthesizers with his friend Ulf Ekberg, and the four came together in 1990 out of an earlier, darker techno project the Berggrens had been running under names including Tech Noir. Happy Nation arrived in 1992 and was reissued for North America in 1994 as The Sign. It went nine times platinum, finished as the best-selling album of 1994, and became the first debut to send three singles to No. 1 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 — All That She Wants, The Sign and Don't Turn Around.

The Bridge followed in 1995, the only Ace of Base album carrying substantial writing, production, vocal and harmony work from all four members, and produced Lucky Love and Beautiful Life. Flowers in 1998, Da Capo in 2002 and The Golden Ratio in 2010 completed five studio albums. The Guinness Book of World Records named their debut the best-selling of all time, and fifty million copies of their first four albums make them the third most commercially successful Swedish act after ABBA and Roxette. Linn withdrew from public life after 2002, and by 2009 Jonas Berggren and Ulf Ekberg were continuing with new singers. The group has been largely inactive since 2012 and has never formally disbanded.