Lars Winnerb?ck

by Lars Lovén
Starting out in a conservative singer/songwriter style, Winnerbäck slid towards pop and rock. In the late '90s, that transition had given him a position as one of the youngest and most popular singer/songwriters in Sweden. Winnerbäck was born in Stockholm but grew up in Linköping, where he sang in the punk rock band Snoddas. Playing a concert in his hometown, he got to know punk and singer/songwriter veteran Johan Johansson, who would act as Winnerbäck's mentor and would also produce two of his records. To be able to release an album with Winnerbäck, two of his friends founded the record company Elvira in 1996, and later that year, Dans Med Svåra Steg was recorded at a very low budget. Being a new and small company, Elvira was not able to do big marketing and the album did not catch much attention. After it's release, Winnerbäck moved to Stockholm and resumed the contact with Johansson. They did a few concerts together that autumn and Johansson produced the next album, Rusningstrafik, also playing drums, percussion, and guitars on it. At its release in the summer of 1997 it sold as much as the debut, which meant it mainly reached a clique of singer/songwriter fans.
In 1998, Winnerbäck left Elvira and got a contract with Universal. Solen I Ögonen was recorded at a much higher budget and included more pop and rock. In the summer 1999, Winnerbäck went on a tour with Stefan Sundström, Kjell Höglund, Johan Johansson, and Karin Renberg. Later that year, KOM! was released, having been recorded using a number of well-known musicians, picked by Winnerbäck. For this album he got a Swedish Grammy award for Best Lyrics and Bellmanpriset, an award for singer/songwriters established by Evert Taube. On Singel, released in 2001, Winnerbäck started to show more influences from rock poets, like Ulf Lundell and Bruce Springsteen, an image that he consciously reinforced in his videos. The album received much attention and from then on Winnerbäck had a natural place on the pop scene and was no longer a business only for the singer/songwriter crowd.