The Radio Dept.’s Johan Duncanson and Martin Larsson know that using music as a form of protest isn’t anything new. From Woody Guthrie to Rage Against the Machine to Kendrick Lamar, popular music has the ability to influence listeners’ points of view—even if their messages are occasionally misinterpreted. This tradition certainly has its place in the band’s native Sweden, via the “progressive rock” genre that addresses current events, though Duncanson and Larsson admit it often leads to a lot of middle-of-the road material. Still, both find it to be a needed institution. Despite the country’s image resembling some kind of liberal utopia, Sweden, like much of Europe, has been besieged with radicalism over the last decade. Their situation might not have risen to the level of international infamy as Trump and his unfortunate masses, but it has resulted frighteningly: in selling and shuttering of government-owned companies and the rise of a far-right anti-immigration party.
Formed in 1995 while still students, Radio Dept.’s original intention was never to address any of this upheaval. Although the title track of their 2000 debut EP Against the Tide featured a political undercurrent, the majority of their music since has leaned hard on heady memories of being young, in love, and confused, often all three at once. In 2006 the band was given a boost internationally when director Sofia Coppola used three of their dreamiest tracks—“Keen on Boys,” “Pulling Our Weight,” and “I Don’t Like it Like This”—in the soundtrack for Marie Antoinette, alongside the likes of Aphex Twin, the Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Rather than capitalize with a quick follow-up to 2006’s Pet Grief, Duncanson and Larsson released the most straightforward political single of their career, “Freddie And the Trojan Horse.” The meaning behind the song couldn’t be veiled: The mid-tempo synth and guitar track was aimed squarely at Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeld, who many felt misrepresented himself as a rep for the working class. In case the criticism was lost amid distortion and drum machines, the duo doubled down with 2010’s “New Hypocrisy,” with lines like, “We’re not concerned with poverty/Just the rebirth of a nation/We don’t mind democracy/We have our ways around it.” Keeping in line with their socialist bent (and coinciding with Sweden’s elections), they released it as a free download.
Running Out Of Love, the Radio Dept.’s fourth album (out October 21), falls in line with the spirit of their previous political singles, detailing life and protests under a seemingly corrupt government. Given their penchant for downbeat pop rife with C86-ish distortion, bantamweight synths, and whispered vocals, the message might be difficult to catch at first. The liner notes refer to the album as a dystopian song cycle, but both Duncanson and Larsson seem more playfully subversive than preachy, peppering songs with lines like, “I drink Cuba Cola/It’s my contribution to the political debate.”
We spoke to Duncanson and Larsson by phone recently to delve into Sweden’s politics, and why that made it impossible to write love songs.
Duncanson: A lot has changed. In 2006, we got a right-wing government. Because of lower taxes, and making all sorts of changes that resulted in income inequality increasing in Sweden, the poor got poorer and the rich got richer. Then came this marginal political party that are very racist and neo fascist called the Sweden Democrats. People went for easy solutions on complicated issues. When someone comes along and blames the immigrants, it’s the kind of solution that a lot of people fall for. They’re not running the government, but they’re big and they’re growing. That’s one of the issues we’re addressing on the album.
Larsson: If you have kids, or if you get sick or you’re going to school in any way, it affects you. It’s worse than it has been before. That’s the immediate effect. The daycares have a harder time employing good people. It’s getting worse for welfare, and also when it comes to human values. There are things you can say in Sweden now that weren’t OK just five years ago. I think the problem for us now is that we think we have very rational and very normal ideas how society should work. It’s not that we’re in any way extreme. But the time and surroundings are really extreme.
Duncanson: It’s been normalized to be very racist. You see a lot of that on social media and even on the bus or on the street. People can blurt out very extreme things. It used to be mainstream to react harshly against racism. Now it’s the other way around. It’s mainstream to be a racist in many ways.
When I started writing the lyrics of Running Out of Love, I tried to write about a lot of different topics. But every song came out like a political text every time. That’s what I think about a lot of the time now. The political climate in Sweden is increasingly scary, all across Europe. Martin and I talk a lot about politics when we meet up. We do that with our other friends as well. Even though we’re in between elections in Sweden—the next one isn’t until 2018—it’s a scary time. It occupies our minds.
There are a lot of bands and artists that seem to me to just be piling words on top of each other—singing about nothing. I don’t think that any band or artist has any obligation or responsibility to write about politics. We’d get a very boring pop scene if a lot of bands started writing songs about politics because they feel that they have a responsibility to do so. But at the same time, I get really bored with bands and people in general for that matter who are super scared of ever saying anything serious. You should write about what you care about. Whether it’s a love song or a political song, as long as you care about what you sing about, it will be good or at least better than bad.
We’re politically active. We go to demonstrations. We vote. We read the paper and we talk about these issues. But we’re also a couple of friends who have a band. We will always be a pop group first and political agitators second. Our lyrics won’t always be about politics, I hope. It just became that way this time because it occupies our mind so much. When writing political lyrics, it’s very easy to become pathetic. It’s very important to have that in mind. I’d choose a love song any day before that kind of political music.
But we like to think we can make a change. It takes a lot of things to push opinion in a certain direction—not just songs but political articles and people demonstrating in the streets. Everything pulled together will make the difference. Songs or bands are no exception to that. They’re just a part of the bigger picture. But it does create a stigma around some ways of looking at things. If you’re a successful artist saying that it’s extremely uncool to be racist and all the kids love that artist, the message will resonate through that generation. And all these people that who took those songs to heart will maybe work as journalists or politicians one day. Or at least they’ll be voters. Music can always play a part in pushing ideas forward.