Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, where elegance meets innovation.

Where cobblestone streets lead you to some of the most well-preserved, effortlessly cool architecture.

But the first thing you notice the water.

It's everywhere.

Winding through the city, connecting the islands like an intricate melody of bridges and waterways.

I've been here a few times, thanks to my childhood friend Karin, so I'm no rookie.

It's nice to be back, especially for the little things like fika, the very Swedish tradition of stopping for coffee and pastries just because.

Karin's dad, Lars Gustafsson, was a legendary Swedish poet, philosopher and a father-figure to me.

He passed away a few years ago, so we visit his grave to pay our respects.

[church bells] -Did you plant these?

-I think, I think his wife planted them.

And people put little pens and pencils in there.

-It's intense because we would play these songs for him.

Always.

Yeah.

So shall we play with this beautiful work happening behind us?

♪ ♪ You've been down for so long and I'm getting awful cold.

The moon is growing very strong and I can't wait for dawn.

♪ ♪ Oh my moonrise.

Oh my moonrise.

-Yeah, I like that it's here.

But I don't think of him as here at all.

That's the thing.

When your father's an existentialist philosopher.

He's everywhere.

Oh, well, Wait, who's his best friend, though?

Oh, Thomas Tranströmer.

He won the Nobel Prize.

♪ ♪ His poetry was born here.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Let's talk music.

Somehow, this quiet city of just under a million people has managed to shape the global sound of pop music.

It's the birthplace of ABBA, the home of Spotify.

And the reason you've had at least one song stuck in your head for days at a time.

-Thanks to Nordic innovators, we share our music on Spotify.

Some of us dance and sing to ABBA and AVICII.

Is it the water?

The long, dark winters.

The government's investment in free music education for kids.

Or some mysterious Swedish hitmaking gene.

I have my theories.

-My peak was since I signed AVICII, 2010.

And from there, you know, when you heard, you know, Levels, which was just a it was just totally came into you like crazy, you know, it was like, wow This is, this is a hit.

-First up, I meet Per Sundin, a music exec currently, the CEO of Pophouse entertainment, Per has been a major player behind the scenes of some of the biggest names in Swedish pop royalty.

He's the perfect person to talk to about the elements that led to the rise of the pop music song machine here in Stockholm.

So in terms of Stockholm being, I would say, the birthplace of modern pop music, what would you say if you had to theorize would be a reason for Max Martin and the Song Machine being able to be perceived here?

I was brought up with listening to the to, you know, the harmonies and riffs.

But if you combine folk music with pop music like ABBA did, that was a perfect storm.

[music] -Max Martin, you know, said that you know, I said that you always need to have a lyrical hook.

The Grammy goes to, ladies and gentlemen, Max Martin.

Okay, so Max Martin is the most prolific pop songwriter and producer ever.

And he's from Stockholm.

If you've listened to pop music in the last 25 years, you've heard his work Britney Spears, The Weekend, Taylor Swift.

He's behind so many hits, it's borderline supernatural.

Max Martin is not just writing songs.

He has reinvented what pop sounds like again and again.

He's kind of like a time bending wizard of pop music.

-I have two paths in this.

One is music.

and the other is technology.

In the end of the 90s, when the internet was booming, the government decided to have the best internet access in Europe.

The government thought that the people would start working from home and do things, you know, but it was the kids who took the computer and turned it into an entertainment machine.

They learned to play the music through the computer station.

Right.

So when Spotify came and changed everything again because Spotify was better than illegal downloading, because of that, Sweden went from.

I was then started in 2008 and I started as CEO for Universal.

And then so I went from being worst in the class to the best in three years.

How?

Because Spotify was booming.

It wasn't that I wasn't smart, it was.

It was that Spotify has exploded in Sweden.

It makes sense that Stockholm, with its early access to high speed internet and a government that championed tech, would become the future hub of pop and online streaming.

Being ahead of the curve means you're already in a future the rest of the world hasn't caught up to yet.

And then there's Sweden's deep rooted tradition of harmonies and folk melodies.

And turns out, that's a pretty solid foundation for global pop domination.

-We're sitting on the top floor of the Spotify headquarters in Stockholm.

You see most of the city from here.

Actually.

It's, it's a nice spot.

Why do you think Swedish people, or specifically people from Stockholm, seem to have a sense of nice sounds that other people would connect to?

Stockholm It's definitely a pop city.

Music is such an integral part of our educational system.

Like, everyone takes music at school from an early age or through our equivalent of high school.

So music is a part of us growing up, and I think that has a part to play in the fact that Sweden has been so successful exporting music.

Right.

And you almost have to go back to the 80s and realize that we only had two TV channels, for example, and a couple of radio stations.

So everyone share the same cultural expression.

And from that to the birth of the internet happened really quick.

So from being really sort of closed off, sharing the same type of culture and really having a mono culture to the internet, opening everything up to everyone really quickly.

I think that just brought in a lot of cultural expressions from, from the outside that we were able to integrate with our own local culture.

And I think that definitely plays a very big part of what you've seen since, since the mid 90s, basically being from Stockholm, like, you see yourself as almost like a global citizen from the beginning, right?

The more global the world gets and the more more accessible the world gets.

It's it's going to be even more important for cities to have their own personality, whether you like it or not.

Spotify has changed the culture of Stockholm, and it serves as a representation of the technological innovation that the city is rooted in.

Inside their headquarters, I visit with the woman who runs their studio and it really is a lovely space, curated for artists to be creative and the perfect spot to learn more about Stockholm songwriter legacy.

-When we have artists and creators, they spend a couple of days here working on a track that's also then mixed here, and then we provide the master as soon as we have like a mix that's approved, and then we deliver the master back to the artist team.

So they own their own rights and royalties, just like they would do with any other recording.

Then we have a project together with the Swedish Grammy Awards, where we invite everyone who's nominated in the Best New Artist category, and they come in here and record and we release that in connection to the award.

So you have your own Grammys?

Yes.

Sweden has its own Grammys.

Yes we do.

It's called “Grammys.” “Grammys?” Yeah, it's more fun.

Yeah.

It's like a localized version of Grammy Awards.

Yeah.

Ivan told me to ask you about Eurovision.

So Eurovision Song Contest is like the international finale or how to say it, but we have this local outtake.

That's a competition only locally here in Sweden, where we have 28 artists and songs competing to represent us in Eurovision Song Contest.

I think it's Sweden's biggest television show.

It's for sure the best music show.

It's been going for a long time.

Yes, it's been going for 60 years or something like that.

If you don't know Eurovision, just know that it's the most prolific international song contest that has ever existed.

It's one of the longest running television programs and it's a huge deal.

It's launched careers including ABBA's Sweden and Ireland are tied for the most wins, but who's counting?

Sweden.

Sweden is counting.

[music] Summertime in Stockholm means the sun is still out at 8 p.m., which makes it easy to lose track of time.

Karin and I joined the locals for Allsang pa Skansen a giant outdoor singalong that's been a thing since 1935.

Here, singing pop songs isn't just for pop stars, it's for everyone.

Tonight is hosted by the Swedish songwriter Loreen, this year's Eurovision champion.

It's a real celebration of local voices.

Now, I've heard that you've come to Allsang before.

Am I saying it right?

Yeah, “Allsang” “All-song” [laughter] That's right.

Such a great Swedish tradition.

I think a lot of good music and, great atmosphere.

What's good about this is that you sing along even though you sit far away from the scene.

Yeah, you sing along.

This is “Allsang.” It means, like, “everybody sing,” Allsang, you know?

So you'll be over here singing along.

Yeah, yeah.

You'll see us dance away in a while [music] Stockholm's history is mostly, well, very Swedish.

But in recent years, immigration has brought new cultures, perspectives and sounds.

Roshi runs an organization dedicated to making professional spaces in Stockholm more inclusive.

Because when you bring in new voices, the music changes, and that's a good thing.

How can you talk about sound without talking about culture or where creativity comes from?

But I think an interesting thing and a part of your work is the inclusivity factor within that.

And I wonder if you could speak a bit about how you view the culture of Stockholm and its evolution and what you work for?

Yeah.

Stockholm has a huge cultural heritage, which is very Swedish, but we've had a lot of migration within the past, maybe four decades.

So the scene and the culture changes within that as well.

But it's very segregated in some ways, as in we're preserving and keeping some parts and some new subcultures that are popping up because of this and because of the history and the places we're at right now, they're not valued the same way.

I think the problem is when you're too segregated and you don't know each other, then you don't know why you're telling this story.

But if I get close to you and I get to know, like, all right, what happened?

How what's the reasoning behind it?

What what happened?

Like, how did you get those feelings?

And then, you know, how that resulted in.

Humanizing.

Yeah, or getting empathy for someone else.

I think that's the key to bringing it together.

[music] ♪ ♪ [singing in Sweedish] ♪ ♪ Stockholm is famous for writing pop music to American artists.

British artists.

It's global but it's also local.

[music] You can see complete darkness and then complete light.

Also, how does.

How does the weather affect you?

I guess that during the cold times and dark times, like, I don't go out certain periods so much.

I don't meet people so much certain times, so I work.

Right.

So it's good that it's not so warm... All the time.

You wouldn't get anything done.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Maybe that's why we're a little more lazy in Texas.

How do you think Spotify and streaming has changed the culture of Stockholm?

There's a lot of independent labels, especially in the rap community, very young and very outside of the What do you say?

The establishment.

And they refuse to like, have a record company and so on.

And they succeed.

They like, they are like, everywhere.

[music] People consider the questions I ask very deep here.

Yeah.

It's nice.

That's because we are afraid of you.

Shall we “skål?” Skål.

Not everyone here is chasing pop superstardom.

Some artists have retreated to the forest outside the city where they create just for the sake of it.

I visit an artist collective that's equal parts studio, sauna and cold plunge retreat.

I guess you could call them hippies, but honestly, I feel right at home.

There's something really rejuvenating about tuning in to the more subtle realms of creative expression.

-And we have bats here, and we have a moose the other day.

-You have bats?

So it's all kinds of animals.

How long have you been using this as your creative space?

Since 2007.

So it's my longest relationship so far.

I asked, you know, the the spirit to kind of, you know, help me to share what what is needed to share.

And I feel like music is different than art because it has a voice and art is it's only the visual.

Oh, ancient mother, please help us all.

We sit counting our bills while we're eating our pails pumped up with stories of bodies to be drilled.

Needs to be filled for kids die in the US.

Bombs exploding, mothers.

It started like this.

Endless love.

In inner space.

That's where it all took place.

And here we are now in endless possibilities.

Trying our best to be free.

Are we, are we are we?

Yeah.

I just want to share.

It's sad.

Yeah.

But I think, you know, I really think it's it's a time for a transition.

You know, that's a big part of this show is like how to connect with people that seem, you know, like a different cultu that we're all connected, you know, through sound.

Thank you.

It's funny to have such a deep conversation and a bikini shirt, but I think it's good.

The world is filled with duality, -It's a Finnish tradition.

And, you dip it in water and then you.

[music] What time is it?

9 p.m.. -Oh, yeah.

That's eight almost, I think 830, something like that.

It's bright.

It's going to be like this for another four hours.

-Okay.

A stranger walks into a bar in Stockholm.

Turns out they're a music producer.

Haha...

Anyway, I met a stranger at a bar in Stockholm, and he was a music producer.

We went around the corner to his studio to see if we could, write a song together.

Let's see how I can do it with these nails.

This kind of thing doesn't usually work, but when it does, it's magical.

-Let's.

Let's try it.

I mean... Yeah, why not?

Okay.

Should we start to make a beat?

I think we can, like, transform into, like, something, you know, like big, like, building it.

Yeah.

I want it to sound like bassy yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Even more bassy?

I think the kick is pretty cool.

Yeah.

Maybe.

Maybe the lower on the snare, yeah.

[singing] Out on my own.

Out on my own...

This cold...

Cold weather's got me down.

I don't usually write sad songs like this, but it's fun.

-I write sad song all the time.

-Yeah, I think it's sad.

Song goes for Stockholm Why?

I don't- Well, there's a melancholy.

Well, I mean, I think the darkness.

Yeah.

Brings it out.

Cold weather's got me down, got me down, got me down.

You.

Pretty cool rough sketch of a song in 30 minutes.

In my head, music literally fills the streets here in Stockholm.

So I arranged a marching band to illustrate that point.

Okay, maybe it was just good timing, but it's the perfect beginning to my walk with local artist and producer Mopiano.

-I always focus on making sure whatever I make is something that I could represent.

But if you make something that's, already popular today, it would be too late already.

Because when you put it out, it's going to be something that was yesterday.

Yeah.

This is Kungsträdgården.

“Kunsta Gordon” Kungsträdgården, yeah.

Kungsträdgården.

-Yeah, exactly.

I feel like Swedish.

It sounds a lot like English, but it just like, has a bounce to it.

Oh yeah.

So the more singing yeah.

Yeah.

And the melodies in our words won't speak, you know.

[singing] Ey, I know, I know [singing] You left your guy on read [singing] On hold, that's cold [singing] The heat is dying slow [singing] Like miles, from home [singing] I'm flying through the storm, oh [singing] The storm, storm, storm, storm.

If you had to define the sound of Stockholm, how would you define it?

You know what Melodifestivalen is?

No, I don't know Melodifestivalen Like before you enter Eurovision, you have to do Melodifestivalen.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

And you have to win it.

So that's called like the songs there is called schlager.

[music] ♪ ♪ Like it's evolving.

So it's a lot of pop.

So it's pop, schlager, And also you have folk and then we have hip-hop today you do a lot of mixture of like a house and a rap maybe, or like, like Swedish House Mafia.

♪ ♪ Maybe you do like this candy in the, in the package, but you just like going to take this one, but you take something else that you like and just- Fun that you describe it as candy because 'pop.'

Yeah.

Bubblegum.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm starting to understand what's unique about the creative energy here in Stockholm.

There's this constant curiosity, a drive to find the next sound, the next feeling, the next way to push pop music forward.

Pretty.

It's like everyone here is wired to think about the future and how it will be perceived, what's going to hit, what's going to shape the sound of tomorrow?

Whoa whoa whoa.

Speaking of hits, Swedish meatballs, you might say they're overplayed, but honestly, they are timeless and will never go out of fashion.

-Really good.

Really!

You can't get this in America.

Oh, yeah?

You mean it would be cheese on it?

No, I mean, probably.

♪ ♪ So maybe there is something in the water here that makes it go down stream more easily for millions of streams or something poetic about water and streaming services.

Look, I don't know, but music is woven into everyday life here in Stockholm.

And whether you write hits, sing folk songs, or just make music for the love of it, Stockholm respects the craft of songwriting.

But some things, like salsa dancing in the park are just for fun.

And there's something hilarious about Swedes trying to keep up with the Latin rhythm.

And honestly, I can relate.

After all of this deep talk about the music industry, it feels good to just dance.

[music] ¡Arriba!

Ya vamos a estallar ¡Apártate!

♪ ♪ Love will take you over all around you.

In the end The places that feel like home to me are the ones where musicians gather, share new songs and play just for the sake of it.

Stockholm has that.

And whether you're here for the industry or just the inspiration, this city sings its own song.

-Okay, now this will be my final song and it is the newest song that I've written.

And I wrote it two days ago in Stockholm about Stockholm spontaneously.

And this is the first time I will be playing it.

Syndrome, Stockholm Cold weather, Better alone.

Not together.

Cold weather, Cold weather's got me down.

Got me down, ♪ ♪ [applause]