Rock’n’roll arrived in Denmark in 1956. Dancing schools, musicians and singers took up the new ’fad’ influenced by American music on film and recordings. In the 1960s, it was The Beatles and The British Invasion which launched innumerable groups in Denmark as well as the rest of the world.

People sang in English and they wanted to both sound and look like the models in Liverpool. In Denmark the style was called ’barbed wire music’.

The Danish scene did not really change until 1967 with the group Steppeulvene (The Coyotes). Although they found inspiration abroad, they wrote their own lyrics, original and most importantly in Danish. The following years saw the debuts of several other groups which blazed new and original trails, including the jazz rock group Burnin’ Red Ivanhoe (formed 1967) and Savage Rose (first appearance 1968), both with roots in classical music. Some 20 albums later, Savage Rose remains artistically active, centred around the singer Annisette (Hansen) (b.1949) and the composer Thomas Koppel (b.1944).

From the late 1960s the ’barbed wire’ music disappeared and ’rock’ in Denmark became ’beat’, a term covering the part of the music created by the youth culture of the period. Alrune Rod (formed 1968) worked with a psychedelic musical idiom, others focused on lyrics originating in the current ideological trends. A sign of the times was the debut album of the group Skousen & Ingemann, Herfra hvor vi står (1971, From where we are standing), with lyrics in Danish.
Beat remained the code word for several years, but during the 1970s rock gradually took over. In the 1970s, Gnags, which was formed in Struer in Western Jutland in 1966, gradually became the most popular live rock band in Denmark, but measured by sales figures the most popular 1970s rock band was Gasolin, which from its origin in Christianshavn in Copenhagen became Danish national property from 1969 to 1978 with a series of saucy, singable lyrics presented with cheeky charm by the group’s lead singer Kim Larsen (b.1945).

In 1983, his solo album Midt om natten (In the Middle of the Night) became Denmark’s best-selling album ever.

Alongside the groups, the Danish scene from the late 1970s and far into the 1980s was dominated by a number of talented singers and song-writers who did not work in permanent group contexts, but who, in Danish, in their different ways contributed to shaping the image of the music of the period and the values and ideologies of the contemporary youth culture. Sebastian (b.1949) produced his first album in 1971 and with his lyrical temperament later had a popular breakthrough as a composer of music for films, musicals and theatre.

The intellectual, coolly observant C.V. Jørgensen (b.1950) made his debut in 1974 and primarily became as a ’song-writers’ song-writer’. Both Sebastian and C.V. Jørgensen remain active. This is also true of Anne Linnet (b.1953), who has worked with a wide range of musical idioms and been a prominent figure since the mid 1970s.

The 1970s punk and New Wave music primarily hit Århus and Copenhagen. In the 1980s, the New Wave band Kliché from Århus spawned the soloist, singer and song-writer Lars H.U.G. (b.1953) and from a start in the Copenhagen experimental punk group Ballet Mecanique, the composer, singer and guitarist Martin Hall (b.1963) became a wide-ranging ’loner’, who subsequently experimented within both music and art.

From the actual Danish punk scene, only Sort Sol (Black Sun) managed to grow as a band from the underground to a status as a solid rock name on the Danish scene. Incidentally, the Danish punk scene also produced the heavy rock band Mercyful Fate, whose Satanic image was continued by the group’s front figure King Diamond (b.1956) in the USA and elsewhere.

The aggressive idiom of punk left plenty of room in the media and with the public for a softer sound, and for a number of years well-playing Danish-language pop rock groups were successful with Danish audiences.

In 1977, the musicians Jens Rugsted and Stig Kreutzfeldt formed the group Rugsted-Kreutzfeldt and 1978 saw the formation of Tøsedrengene (The Sissies), which reached a broad audience with its mixture of pop rock and reggae. Sneakers appeared in 1979 and remained a Danish top name until 1985, mainly because of the singer Sanne Salomonsen (b.1955), who gave the group its dynamic live expression.

In the late 1980s, Salomonsen (now without Sneakers) was indisputably the uncrowned Rock Queen of Denmark. On the rawer rock scene, groups emerging in the 1980s included the still active D-A-D.

The group TV-2 made its debut in 1981 with roots in the Århus music scene. The idiomatic lyrics of Steffen Brandt (b.1953) with their ironic, satirical snapshots of life in Denmark secured solid attention and broad popularity for the band, but it has retained its image and anchoring in rock music.

Like TV-2, two of the popular Danish singers and song-writers of 1990s also came from Århus: the roots and blues based Poul Krebs (b.1956) with songs in Danish and the soul-inspired Thomas Helmig (b.1964), who attained actual idol status in the 1990s with songs in English such as Stupid Man from the best-seller album of the same name from 1993.

Some of Helming’s records are issued abroad, but without resulting in an international breakthrough. On the other hand, the heavy rock band Pretty Maids (formed 1981) has achieved greater success abroad than at home and in the mid 1990s the pop rock group Michael Learns to Rock (formed 1988) had a very large following in Asia.

The Danish rock trio Dizzy Mizz Lizzy (1988-1997) was also well received there, especially in Japan. As a soloist, the group’s front figure, singer and guitarist Tim Christensen (b.1974), was one of the best-selling Danish rock artist in 2003.

During the 1990s, the Danish scene developed in several directions. The dynamic DJ and dance culture from among others the USA and Great Britain inspired producers, remixers and DJ’s such as SoulShock (b.1968) and Cutfather (b.1968), who also made their mark abroad.

On the actual electronic music scene there was broad experimentation, for instance by the ambient group Future 3 (formed 1994), whose Thomas Knak (b.1973) in 2001 wrote songs with the Icelandic artist Björk. On the clubbing scene, the Goa-trance group Koxbox (formed 1990) made its mark with extensive tours of the USA, Latin America, Australia and elsewhere.

A number of Danish rap groups inspired by American hip hop culture developed at the same time, often with very funny lyrics. The first were MC Einar (formed 1987) and Østkyst Hustlers (East Coast Hustlers, formed 1994), later came for instance Den Gale Pose (also known as Madness 4 Real, formed 1996) and Hvid Sjokolade (White Chocolate, formed 1996).

In recent years, the rap trio Outlandish (formed 1997), with their English lyrics and musical elements borrowed from the Arab and the Latin American cultures, has attracted some international attention. Alongside the very maledominated rap scene, a number of new female rock song writers made their debuts, including Randi Laubek (b.1973) and Tina Dickow (b.1977).

On the actual rock scene since 2000, the trio Kashmir (formed 1991) stands as the band able to combine formal innovation with commercial success in Denmark. On the Danish mainstream rock scene, Saybia (formed 1993) and Carpark North (formed 1999) were the most popular bands in 2002-2003.

The Danish record industry is dominated by the large international record companies: BMG, EMI, Sony Music and Universal Music, all with offices in Copenhagen and a common distribution network in Denmark through the limited company GDC A/S. Alongside sales of their international catalogues, the companies have also been responsible for most of the Danish production of pop and rock for many years. The 1980s independent Danish record companies with popular pop and rock artists were bought by the ’biggies’. The company Genlyd with names such as Gnags and Thomas Helmig was bought by BMG Denmark in 1990 and Medley with names such as Kim Larsen and Sort Sol became part of EMI in 1994. However, this concentration has made room for new, small, local companies, including Bad Afro Records with the group Bady Woodrose, and Cruch Frog Records, which is skilfully backing new distinctive Danish rock and pop groups such as The Ravonettes and Junior Senior, who have both managed also to get a foreign record contract. Entirely independently, the rock band Swan Lee with the singer Pernille Rosendahl (b.1972) has made a strong impression.

Source: demmark.dk