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Ace of Base star gig flops, selling 12 tickets

They were one of Sweden's biggest bands of the 1990s, but when Ace of Base singer Jenny Berggren attempted to put on a charity concert for up to 1,200 people, the idea bombed.

Published: 10 December 2015 10:49 CET
Ace of Base star gig flops, selling 12 tickets
Jenny Berggren (second from right) with Ace of Base in 1998. Photo: Michael Brannäs/TT
The star, known for singing hits including 'Don't Turn Around' and 'The Sign' didn't get all that she wanted this week, after planning a fundraising gig for Swedish charity Team Rynkeby. The organization raises money for children with cancer, usually through sponsored cycle events.
 
Only 12 tickets were sold for the concert, scheduled to take place on Thursday at the Sparbanken Skåne Arena in popular student city Lund.
 
“Despite huge interest, exposure and engagement in social, national and local media, we are being forced to cancel (…) the reason for this is that we have not managed to sell enough tickets,” George Jonasson, from the event management firm Bellwether Productions, which organized the event, said in a press statement seen by regional newspaper Sydsvenskan.
 
He said that 450 tickets needed to be sold in order for the event to break even, with the venue having an overall capacity for 1,200 people. But by midday on Wednesday just a dozen people looked set to turn up to the event.
 
Jonasson explained that those who had already paid up would get a full refund if they wished.
 

Ace of Base singer Jenny Berggren. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT/Scanpix
 
The lack of interest in the concert comes despite a mini-revival for Ace of Base, which made Jenny Berggren a global celebrity 20 years ago.
 
The band released a new album in March, containing 10 tracks recorded between 1991 and 2005, when Berggren was still part of the line-up. 
 
The group sold more than 30 million records during their career, behind only Abba and Roxette.
 
Ace of Base were also back in the headlines last year after a teenage pop quartet tribute act named A*Base released its first single in November 2014. 

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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